Caca da Luna

Wednesday 11th July 2012

The weather turned out nice today. A little early morning drizzle, but then patches of brightness. A fresh breeze meant that at last I was able to get the lawns (by now more accurately described as meadows) mown, though I had to circumvent the electrics on the ride-on so that it could throw the cuttings straight out of the back without having anywhere to catch on and clog up.

A mystery today.

On one of the porch uprights on the garage I found this growing two days ago. It started out about an inch high and white. By yesterday it was over 2 inches and silver. It's not often that nature produces anything silver.

I'm fairly sure it's some sort of fungus. Sue reckons there's a beetle inside.

By today, it looked like this...

Following my instincts, I've just typed "silver fungus" into Google image search and there it was. The fifth image. My fungus.

Or, to be more precise, the slime mould, Enteridium lycoperdon, or False Puffball.

Sue was a little bit right too. There is a slime mold fly which lays its eggs inside, hatching out as worm-like larvae.

Rather delightfully, according to Wikipedia, it's known as Caca da Luna in Mexico. Moonshit!!
What a very appropriate name.