Trichia decipiens

Description

Trichia decipiens is a worldwide fungus in the slime mold family. This unusual orange to red mucilaginous organism belongs to the phylum of the Mycetozoa, to the class of the Myxomycetes, order Trichiales and to the family Trichiaceae. It is frequent in the humid woods, rotting trunks of broad-leaved trees and conifers.

Like all myxomicetes, the Trichia decipiens, displays a quite complex vital and reproductive cycle, where appear uninucleate phases (spores and other mobile cells) as well as plurinucleate (plasmodium).

During the milder seasons of the year, the Trichia decipiens, lives as cells with only one nucleus, feeding mainly on bacteria, yeasts and spores of other fungi it phagocytizes, engulfing them with extroflexions of the cellular membrane. These cells, always mobile, may assume two forms depending on the environmental conditions: when the humidity is so high to allow them to swim they display a flagellate form (called planocyte or myxoflagellate), whilst when it is low they assume an amoeboid, creeping form (myxamoeba). If the humidity changes, both forms can adapt transforming in the other but cannot survive long time a drought. In this case, they reduce the activity and render the surface more rigid and waterproof, that is, they encyst (the reason for which they are called microcyst) until the environmental conditions come back to acceptable levels.

Slime molds have been found all over the world and feed on microorganisms that live in any type of dead plant material.

Common names: Eggs of Salmon.

Mushroom Identification

1. Description

   The plasmodium is white and orange to red at maturity. The small to large accumulations of fine, shiny yellow-olive to olive-green or brown fruit bodies are usually petiolate, rarely sessile sporangia. They are cone-shaped to pear-shaped, up to 3 millimeters, and measure 0.6 to 0.8, rarely up to 1.3 millimeters in diameter. The Hypothallus is widened, shining colorless to brown and membranous. The cylindrical shaft is wrinkled, dark brown at the base, becoming lighter towards the top, and filled with up to 1 millimeter long, spore-like vesicles. The solid or membranous peridium is yellow, with thin bodies are often translucent, but thickened and down as deep, shallow and rudimentary Calyculus outlasting. The olive in mass to olive-yellow capillitium consists of non-adult, simple or branched, deep olive-yellow, 5 to 6 microns thick elaters, which are in relief as three to five protruding spiral strands and run towards the ends pointed. The spore mass is olive-yellow to olive-brown in transmitted light pale olive-yellow, occasionally with a still paler section. The spores are 10 to 13 microns in diameter, they mostly have a reticulated surface, the remaining surface is densely warty or prickly.

2. Stem

   Initially white-translucent, with inside some granular structures well visible, whilst the sporangium is of variable color, brownish to glossy orange. The sporangium has a membranaceous yellowish-translucent external layer, the peridium, that while getting old becomes brown-yellowish, bearing inside a great quantity of nuclei.

3. Habitat

   The species is distributed worldwide. It is found throughout the year on dead wood of coniferous and deciduous trees.

History

Trichia decipiens was first described as Arcyria decipiens in 1795 by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon based on a 1778 collection from a forest in Chemnitz. Macbride reclassified the species in 1899 into the genus Trichia.

The name of the genus, Trichia, derives from the Greek substantive “θρίξ, τριχός” (thrix, trichós) = hair, bristle, regarding the capillitium that uncovers the pyriform reproductive structures, whilst that of the species, decipiens, from the Latin verb “decipere” = to deceive, which misleads.

Synonyms

1. Arcyria decipiens Pers. (1795)

2. Trichia fallax Pers. (1796)

3. Trichia fallax var. dilutior Alb. & Schwein. (1805)

4. Trichia fallax f. cerina (Ditmar) Rostaf. (1875)

5. Trichia fallax var. cerina (Ditmar) Berl. (1888)

6. Trichia fallax f. minor Rostaf. (1875)

7. Trichia fallax var. minor (Rostaf.) Berl. (1888)

8. Trichia fallax var. gracilis Meyl. (1910)

9. Trichia decipiens var. gracilis (Meyl.) Meyl. (1933)

10. Trichia decipiens f. rubiformis Meyl. (1913)

11. Trichia decipiens var. hemitrichoides Brândza (1914);

12. Lycoperdon pusillum Hedw. (1780)

13. Trichia pusilla (Hedw.) G.W. Martin (1949)

14. Trichia virescens Schumach. (1803)

15. Trichia cerina Ditmar (1814)

16. Trichia fulva Purton (1821)

17. Trichia furcata Wigand (1863)

18. Trichia nana Zukal (1886)

19. Trichia stuhlmannii Eichelb. (1907)

20. Trichia fernbankensis Frederick, R. Simons & I.L. Roth (1984)

Photo sources:

Photo 1 - Author: Eileen Laidlaw (Public Domain)

Photo 2 - Author: Peta McDonald (Public Domain)

Photo 3 - Author: ahaukka (Public Domain)

Photo 4 - Author: Quinten Wiegersma (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Photo 5 - Author: Bruce Taylor (CC BY-SA 4.0)