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365 Urban Species. #303: Stemonitis axifera

Photos by cottonmanifesto. Location: Olmsted park.

Urban species #303: Stemonitis axifera

Repeatedly (probably too repeatedly) I have used this project as a platform to expound upon the underappreciated biodiversity of beautiful forms in the fungus kingdom. Outside of that kingdom, but usually studied in the same field guides and classes, are the slime molds, which show an extraordinary range of bizarre appearances themselves. These animal-like organisms are similar (to concieve in our minds) to colonial amobae, swarming masses of plasma, thousands of cells without membranes grouped together in a gooey mobile soup. This plasma stage crawls and eats, usually sweeping across wet dead wood, capturing and consuming mircroorganisms. When their microhabitat dries up, the plasma collects itself into fungus-like fruiting bodies that package up spores to be carried away on the air in order to grow a new slime mold in greener pastures, as it were. It is this fruiting body stage that we usually encounter, in weird and interesting shapes, some of which are common enough to have their own common names. Already we have dared to examine creatures called "dog vomit" and "wolf's milk." Stemonitis doesn't have a broadly accepted common name, but is referred to by the incongruous combination of words "chocolate tube slime." Its appearance isn't wholly unlike tubes of chocolate, but it looks more like dusty brush bristles, or a short tuft of hair stuck to a dead log (the ones in our photographs have shed many of their spores, so the bristles look somewhat faint and feathery). Before the spores are mature the mass is white and gelatinous, and apparently delicious to slugs. There are many different species of Stemonitis which are difficult to identify to species without looking at the spores with a microscope. S. axifera is most commonly referred to, and is probably found worldwide.