xylaria
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
There was a thread last year with the same slime mold.
It spends the rest of the year as amoebic single celled haploid "creatures". Then every spring that have a get together, get very friendly share genetics and form the diploid creature you see now. It then crawls up as high it can and then turns into a dusty spore mass.
Slime-molds don't turn up in an average field guide. They were placed in thier own kingdom when I was at uni. Makes you think, a whole kingdom of life that hardly anyone knows about, with a life cycle that is too far fetched for most sci-fi.
It spends the rest of the year as amoebic single celled haploid "creatures". Then every spring that have a get together, get very friendly share genetics and form the diploid creature you see now. It then crawls up as high it can and then turns into a dusty spore mass.
Slime-molds don't turn up in an average field guide. They were placed in thier own kingdom when I was at uni. Makes you think, a whole kingdom of life that hardly anyone knows about, with a life cycle that is too far fetched for most sci-fi.