NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1466294
32 Nebraskaland • May 2022 the blast and retracted in anticipation. Contrary to traditional beliefs about primitive organisms, these behaviors suggest that slime molds have forms of intelligence and memory comparable to simple animals that possess nerves and elementary brains. Scientists are unsure how intelligence and memory work in slime molds, but assume it is through chemical messaging in the cell fl uids. For now, it remains a mystery. Dog Vomit Last August, while tussling with our English Cocker pup in the front yard, I spotted several white blobs clinging to the grass. The blobs were dog vomit — not from our pup, but the so-named slime mold (Fuligo septica). This grossly, but aptly-named species indeed looks like dog vomit, especially the foamy kind they expel after eating too much grass. The yellow-colored form of this species is often called scrambled eggs slime mold. Dog vomit is widespread, possibly the most readily observed of the slime molds. It inhabits forest fl oors and logs, urban mulch piles, gardens and lawns. Its appearance in our yard was abrupt, as I had just mowed a day or two prior. A few days after I fi rst observed the dog vomit, its white fruiting heads faded to tan in color and hardened with calcium. Soon after, it disintegrated, releasing its black spores. Although the dog vomit patches in my yard were at most a few inches across, infestations can be quite large. In 1973 in a Dallas suburb, a particularly large outbreak of dog vomit spread across lawns. Panicking, residents called fi refi ghters to hose the mysterious blobs into oblivion. The jets of water only broke the slime mold into pieces that continued to slither and grow, sending suburban imaginations further out of control. Possibly stoked by the 1958 sci-fi movie The Blob, they now feared that indestructible alien creatures had invaded their neighborhood, even as scientists reassured them that the invaders were harmless, earthly slime molds. Eventually, the "aliens" dissipated on their own, without the need for a nuclear strike. The Dallas scare testifi es to how little we, as a society, perceive and understand nature. Botanists use the phrase "plant blindness" to refer to the general public's inability to see or notice plants in their environment. This is likely because plants are green, stationary and less eye-catching than mobile and more colorful animals. As a botanist, I must now confess to "slime mold blindness." All the years I have hiked Nebraska woodlands, head cranked down searching for plants, I have been oblivious to these beautiful and fascinating organisms. What I have missed! N A many-headed slime plasmodium growing on a log at Indian Cave. CHANCE BRUEGGEMANN