Looking at Slime Moulds
Whilst working in Chalet Wood, Wanstead Park, on 6th March 2014, Gill James showed me some lovely little organisms she had found on some rotten wood. I was intrigued; they looked like balls of black metal on a stand. I suspected a slime mould, but had never seen the likes. When I say “little”, I mean tiny. The “balls” were less than a millimetre across. A photograph and a discussion with local naturalist/biologist Roger Snook eventually ran them down to - probably - Metatrichia floriformis which is a slime mould. The following day, most of the balls had gone and instead was a mass – albeit a small mass - of orangey dehiscence.
The Mycetozoa or slime moulds are an intriguing group of organisms which have been classified as fungi, as protozoa and more recently as an entirely separate class of living thing.
Metatrichia floriformis on 6th March 2014
Metatrichia floriformis the next day - 7th March 2014
Gulielma Lister, a local naturalist, wrote a classic work on the Essex Mycetozoa*. In this she listed 18 species from Epping Forest as a whole, fourteen of which were noted as specifically occurring in Wanstead Park.
She was the daughter of Arthur Lister (1830-1908) and the niece of the famous Quaker surgeon Joseph Lord Lister (1827-1912). She and her father were both amateur naturalists as well as accomplished artists. They lived in Leytonstone and so visited the southern end of Epping Forest and in particular Wanstead Park on many occasions.
For some more information about Gulielma Lister, click here
Paul Ferris, 13 March 2014
* (The Mycetozoa. Lister, G. 1918. (Essex Field Club Special Memoirs vi. Essex Field Club; Stratford, Essex.)