Behold The Amazing Pretzel Slime Mold

The Pretzel Slime Mold (Hemitrichia serpula) is a myxomycete organism that grows on decaying wood. It usually looks like a confection named pretzel, namely a hard salty biscuit that has been baked in a stick or knot shape originated in Germany.

Today, I'll introduce you more complicated Pretzel Slime Mold that looks like as if many snakes entwined together. In fact, this slime mold is called Hebi-nukahokori in Japanese and Hebi means snakes.　

The peridium (the outer wall or membrane which encloses the spores in the fruit bodies of slime molds) came off and inner structures became exposed.

At first, I thought it might be a different slime mold, Fuligo aurea considering its shape. But Fuligo aurea has black spore mass, on the contrary, in the case of this slime mold, both spore mass and capillitium (threadlike elements) are yellow, therefore there is no such a possibility, I guess.

 

This slime mold grows on the tilted dead tree which is off the ground as you can see. 

This shows the comparison of size with a Japanese coin. The diameter is 22 millimetres.

Please look at the hollow indicated by a white arrow.

There is a small Pretzel Slime Mold. Usually it is flat in shape.

This is different Pretzel Slime Mold that I found last year. This is flat and is not overlapped each other. Looking at this, you can see how amazing the slime mold shown in this time was.