False Puffball

Distribution

It is recorded throughout Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Europe, and in Mexico.

Behavior

The slime mould has two phases to its life cycle: an actively feeding plasmodial stage and a reproductive sporangial stage.

The plasmodial phase is mobile and is multi-nucleate, formed by the fusion of single cells and typically amoeboid in its movements, through cytoplasmic streaming.

The sporangial or aethalial phase of this slime mould is spherical, elongate or globular, 50 to 80 mm, and is at first highly glutinous in appearance, resembling small slug eggs. Later a smooth white and silvery surface develops, which eventually splits to expose a brown spore mass beneath. An aethalium is a term relating to slime moulds, referring to the relatively big, plump, pillow-shaped fruiting body, formed by the aggregation of plasmodia into a single functional body. The term comes from the Greek for thick smoke or soot; so named from the smokelike spores.

Habitat

It grows typically on dead alder branches, logs, and stumps in wet places beside rivers, streams and wetlands; it is also found growing on dead elm, beech, poplar, hawthorn, elder, hornbeam, hazel, and pine trees often after late frosts in spring and in the autumn.

Food

The plasmodial phase feeds by phagocytosis upon bacteria, fungi, moulds, yeasts, inorganic particles and spores. If conditions become too dry, the plasmodium changes into a sclerotium, a dry and dormant state, awaiting the return of wet conditions.