A couple of days ago I spotted this shiny gray fungus on the trunk of an upright dead tree. It's about 2 inches across, looks like melted metal, and is quite hard and dry to the touch. There's no sign of a stalk or gills. Is it some kind of slime mold? Does anybody know its name?
Maybe a bacterial gall?
Can you pry it off the tree, show the bottom of the structure, and maybe cut in in half and show the inside?
I'm reluctant to destroy the only one I know of! I will search for more, and I find another I'll disassemble one of them and post the results.
This morning's search did not turn up any additional specimens. However, the one I found is now changing color. The silvery skin is turning velvety brown in patches. I took another browse through my reference book, and I have found a candidate for ID. The slime mold Enteridium lycoperdon's fruit body is described as "cake-like" with a with a silvery-brown outer wall and a dark brown spore mass. The only thing I don't see yet is a "conspicuous white margin (hypothallus)", but maybe by tomorrow it will be evident. Stay tuned!
Here's a pic taken today showing the slivery skin sloughing off to reveal the brown spore mass. I still don't see a "conspicuous white margin", so the ID is not yet confirmed.
After Googling Enteridium lycoperdon, and finding some pics showing one developing from silvery gray to cocoa brown without any white margin, I am going to stick my neck out and say my slime mold is ID'd.
The solved thread function is not available in this forum, so I can't change the header. All I can do is say:
SOLVED!
This message was edited Sep 10, 2010 6:07 PM
