Fuligo septica

A few weeks ago, I noticed something strange on one of my composters out the back. These are the big, heavy plastic (I think) black and brown composters that the City of Toronto has been selling at Environment Days for years. They have a top you plop on and slits on the sides to let the air in. And one composter had something strange sort of oozing out of the slits - a bright yellow something. I lifted the lid of the composter with some trepidation and saw the top of the composting materials inside were covered with this bright yellow something and it was oozing out wherever it could. Looked like something in a science fiction movie - and I wasn't far off the track there - see below.

Anyway, I was busy with something and just left the top off, hoping it would go away. I noticed the next day the yellow ooze had sort of hardened into a dark brown mass - I thought maybe that meant it had died - actually, it didn't.

Then this evening, I was admiring my raised vegetable bed and my husband said - what's that yellow stuff in the corner? To my horror, it was the yellow something again. I got rid of it by scraping it up and the soil underneath with an old piece of broken crockery, then washing the side of the wood bed in that spot with soap and water. But now I had to know what it was!

Enter the Internet. I googled "yellow fungus on soil" and son of a gun, I found it - just like that. Fuligo septica, also know as (are you ready for this ?) "dog vomit slime mold" . It seems to happen very commonly on ground bark mulch or wood chips and doesn't always take the bright yellow form. In fact, having seen many interesting pictures of slime mold in the last couple of hours, I think I have sometimes seen forms of it on wood chips - but never the bright yellow colour.

Anyway, I found out that it usually shows up in especially damp conditions, it's always around, it's perfectly harmless, and is even edible, if you really are that hungry. And, this particular kind of slime mold, Fuligo septica, is credited with inspiring the original movie The Blob.

The things I wouldn't know if I wasn't a gardener!