The Urban Pantheist

As a naturalist, one of the great joys in my life is discovering that some gross goo or scum that forms on something is evidence of a living thing with a name and natural history. This nasty orange film growing on the Norway maple stump is a yeast known as tree stump slime or Cryptococcus macerans. It's feeding on the sugars in the tree sap, while using antifungal and antibacterial chemicals to keep competing microorganisms at bay. Beta-carotine provides the color.