A slimy character

I headed off to Haddo House this afternoon in search of waxcap fungi. I had little success but just as I was giving up I found this wondrous beast. Crawling over a rotting tree this is the cauliflower slime mould Reticularia lycoperdon. I first blipped this species a few years back and I can't really improve on what I said then; so here it is again!

Slime moulds aren't plants, nor animals, nor fungi, instead they are usually classified as belonging to the Protista. Slime moulds cells spend most of their lives as independent, amoeba-like cells, dining on fungi and bacteria, but if times become hard they swarm and aggregate into an enormous multi-nucleated single cell or a mass of individual cells which moves slowly across the ground in an organised fashion. These large masses act like giant amoebas, creeping slowly along and engulfing food particles along the way. If a slime mould aggregate is diced up, the pieces will pull themselves back together. The blobs can navigate and avoid obstacles and if a food source is placed nearby, they seem to sense it and head unerringly for it.

My encounter this morning reminded me of an interesting day at work some years ago. My department was sent on an "away day" to contemplate our navels. A chap in a smart pale grey silk suit had been brought in, no doubt at huge expense, to facilitate our contemplation. He started off by asking each of us to think of an animal or plant which best described our department and to say why. I have long forgotten all of the responses except one. A colleague who, like me, was wishing he was anywhere but there, opined that our department was like a slime mould; it gave every impression of knowing where it was, what it was doing and where it was going, but in reality it didn't have a bloody clue! We all cheered up after that!