Mushroom-like Slime Mold Covers Garden Candytuft

A reader told Aamulehti they recently found dense, mushroom-like patches of slime mold on the leaves of a garden candytuft plant.

Tomi Kumpulainen, curator at the Tampere Natural History Museum and the columnist behind a weekly nature question column, identified the growth as slime mold rather than a true fungus. He said it was likely one of several local species that produce small, mushroom-like fruiting bodies, and the reader estimated the patch at roughly 10 by 10 cm.

Slime molds are relatives of amoebas, not fungi. They form short-lived plasmodia during their life cycle, and colour and shape change through development, so precise species identification usually requires examining spores under a microscope. Kumpulainen normally handles sightings from Pirkanmaa but will answer questions from elsewhere when possible.

Similar small, hard-to-identify molds and fungi have been reported in the Tampere area before, including a white, thread-like mold seen at Tohloppijärvi in early September a recent sighting.