28 Nebraskaland • May 2022
Discovering
Slime Molds
Story and photos by Gerry Steinauer,
Botanist
wo years ago, while morel mushroom hunting in a
creekside woodland near Aurora, I saw a pink, dime-
sized "ball" sprouting from a log. Baffl ed, I concluded it
was a strange puff ball mushroom. I snapped a photo and
texted it to my go-to guy for mushroom identifi cation, Chance
Brueggemann, woodland ecologist at Indian Cave State Park.
His response: "It's wolf's milk, a slime mold." I wasn't sure
what a slime mold was. I assumed they were slimy, mold-like
fungi that grew on basement walls, long-forgotten food in
a refrigerator and other dark, damp places. A little research
showed how wrong I was.
Slime molds are like no other organism on our planet and
these single-celled creatures have confounded naturalists
for centuries. In their feeding stage, they are called a
"plasmodium" and slowly creep under and about rotting logs,
soil and leaf litter. Amazingly, experiments have shown that
plasmodia display simple forms of intelligence and memory.
Late in life, plasmodia transform into stationary, spore-
producing, fruiting bodies that often appear as tiny, colorful
mushrooms.
Recently, scientists, with the aid of DNA analysis, have
placed slime molds (Myxomycetes) into the kingdom protista,
a catchall group of mostly single-celled organisms not fi tting
neatly into the other four kingdoms of life: animals, plants,
fungi and bacteria. The slime molds' DNA suggests they are
ancient creatures, one to two billion years old, slithering over
the Earth's barren rock surface at a time when the only other
land creatures were bacteria. Today, they mostly inhabit
moist forests.
I would be remiss not to mention the slime molds' intricate
beauty.
Red Lollipop
Last June, Brueggemann and I spent two days searching
for and photographing slime molds in the steep Missouri
River bluff forests at Indian Cave. The fi rst morning, we
veered off a hiking trail and entered a deep ravine bottom
with a trickling stream. After a short hike, parting low-
hanging ironwood and elm branches, our target came into
sight — Brueggemann's favorite spot to fi nd slime molds: a
hefty, decaying log.
The log did not disappoint. First, Brueggemann showed
me a colony of fruiting wolf's milk (Lycogala epidendrum) —
pink globes growing from the rain-soaked wood. He pricked
T
A Botanist's Adventure
