explorergecko9's Identifications

The most common species of slime mold is the dog vomit slime mold (also called scrambled egg slime mold). DVSM was long considered to be a fungus, but is now known to be something quite different, belonging to the phylum within the Protista kingdom (neither plant nor animal) known as Myxomycetes.

Unlike fungus, DVSM moves about like an amoeba, slithering slowly at night so that on any given morning it's never quite where it was the day before, nor is it in exactly the same shape. The term for this is "plasmodium". It's wandering, engulfing habit even inspired a movie: "The Blob" (1958 and again in 1988) in which a creeping, unstoppable gel engulfed an entire town. The real stuff is much smaller, forming a mass that is rarely larger than 2 to 24 inches wide.

DVSM is found worldwide, largely in forests and other moist, shady areas. It is normally harmless to people and plants living mostly on bacteria, molds and fungi. DVSM is actually edible. In parts of Mexico it is collected and cooked with eggs in a dish called "caca de luna" (you can guess what that means).