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Red raspberry slime
Tubulifera arachnoidea - Jacq. 1778
50.8843, 5.98617
Field Notes
Description:
Scientific name: Tubifera ferruginosa (Batsch.) Gmel.
Derivation of name: Ferrug- means "rusty" or "rust" and
osa means "fullness" or "abundance."
Synonyms:
Common name(s): Red raspberry slime.
Phylum: Myxomycota
Order: Liceales
Family: Reticulariaceae
Occurrence on wood substrate: Fruitbodies crowded
together and compressed, forming raspberrylike forms; June
through November.
Dimensions: Individual fruit bodies are less than 0.5 mm
wide and are up to 3-5 mm high. Compressed clusters can
be up to 15 cm or more in length.
Description: When reddish in color and compressed
together, the sporangia of this slime mold resemble red
raspberries. The cluster soon matures into a purplish and then
brownish mass at maturity resembling what Lincoff calls "a
bunch of miniature cigars."
Edibility: Inedible.
( http://www.messiah.edu/Oakes/fungi_on_wood/club%20and%20coral/species%2… )
Habitat:
SPOROCARPS: A pseudoaethalium composed of numerous sessile sporangia crowded together, individual sporangia cylindrical to ovate, pale umber to reddish brown or purplish brown, up to 0.4 mm in diameter and 5 mm tall with the entire structure reaching 150 mm or more in size.
HYPOTHALLUS: well developed, membranous to spongy, colourless to pallid.
HYPOTHALLUS: membranous, thin, persisting in mature fruiting bodies except at the individual sporangia, where it tends to break away.
SPORES: Umber brown in mass, pallid by transmitted light, finely reticulated over three quarters of the surface, 6 - 8 µm in diameter.
PLASMODIUM: Watery and colourless, becoming milky white then changing through rose to brown.
HABITAT: Decaying wood or wood debris, occasionally on forest floor leaf litter.
DISTRIBUTION: Cosmopolitan
( http://hiddenforest.co.nz/slime/family/reticulariaceae/retic01.htm )
Notes:
Comments: Tubifera ferruginosa is a slime mold.
While not fungi, slime molds often form spore-bearing
structures that resemble those of the true fungi. Although
many slime mold species fruit on wood they do not form a
penetrating and absorptive mass of hyphae in the wood
substrate. Rather, slime molds form structures called
plasmodia which are naked (i.e., without cell walls) masses of
protoplasm which can move and engulf particles of food in an
amoeboid manner. Slime mold plasmodia creep about over
the surfaces of materials, engulfing bacteria, spores of fungi
and plants, protozoa, and particles of nonliving organic
matter. At some point, plasmodia convert into spore-bearing
structures. In Tubifera ferruginosa, the plasmodium
converts into a clustered mass of sporangia which compress
together to form what is called a pseudoaethalium. In such a
structure, the individual sporangia still retain their identity but
the sporangia are so tightly compressed together that they
resemble an aethalium such as that formed by Fuligo septica
or Lycogala epidendrum ( messiah), ( http://www.mycobank.org/MycoTaxo.aspx?Link=T&Rec=149457 ), ( http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?search=Tubifera+ferruginosa ), ( http://www.soortenbank.nl/soorten.php?soortengroep=paddenstoelen&id=1017 )
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