Tag Archives: Lycogala slime mould

Wolf’s milk update

02 Friday Jul 2021

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You might remember that on 18 June I blogged about Wolf’s milk, one of the Lycogala species of slime moulds, and noted that I couldn’t positively identify it until I saw the colour of its spores. Well, I’ve been back to recheck these slime balls. They took a bit of finding, as the dense tree canopy of the woodland makes the area quite dark and their change of colour as the slime balls have matured made them blend in with the log they were growing on, as you can see below.

210702 Lycogala terrestre (1)

The good news is that I have been able to identify them. I ‘popped’ one – not a bad thing for the slime as this released its spores for distribution – and found the spore colour to have a pinkish hue, which confirmed the species as Lycogala terrestre.

210702 Lycogala terrestre (2)

Wolf’s milk

18 Friday Jun 2021

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Two species of the slime mould Lycogala can be found in Britain, Lycogala epidendrum and Lycogala terrestre, and it’s only possible to distinguish one from the other by checking the colour of their spores, grey and pink respectively. To do that I’d need to revisit these lovely globules of Lycogala in a week or so – I’ll try to remember, and update this post accordingly.

210618 wolfs milk

Both Lycogala species are commonly known as Wolf’s milk, though I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps someone thought the orange-pink substance they secrete when poked resembled the milk of wolves? North American’s apparently call it Toothpaste slime, which makes me glad I don’t use their brands of toothpaste!