Maxwell's Page

     Recently, I’ve been messing around with a hemitrichia plasmodium that I grew from sporangia obtained from the wilderness. The plasmodia was white at first, but began to turn yellow after it began depleting the agar on which I was growing it on. I then transferred it to a larger plate, and after a couple of days, I began noticing some weird behavior. It had originally spread out across the plate, but was now clumping up into mounds which had the appearance of scrambled eggs (Picture 1). The…See More

Hello, I’ve been trying to complete the spore to spore life cycle of a hemitrichia species. I’ve had success in getting it form plasmodia, but I’d like some advice past this point. I’d like to know how to get the plasmodia to form sclerotia and sporulate. Frim what I know, sporulation is encouraged when the slime mold runs out of food and is exposed to light, and they form sclerotia when dehydrated. I have a couple questions regarding this. Firstly, does would any light work getting them to…See More

Recently, I’ve been trying to grow hemitrichia sp. and stemonitis spp. from spores harvested from the wild. I’ve had success in getting the spores to germinate, but I haven’t been able to get the amoeba to form plasmodia. Another problem that I’ve been having is that a couple days after germinating, all of the myxamoeba in the culture will randomly encyst. This may be why I haven’t had luck getting plasmodia as the amoeba don’t stay amoeba long enough to form one, but I’m not entirely sure.…See More

Hello. Recently I’ve been trying to grow some unidentifiable plasmodium on some water agar plates. I obtained this plasmodium by finding it under a decaying log on a hike. Since all plasmodia look similar, I wasn’t able to identify it without being able to see its fruiting body. You can see the original plasmodium I found in the second picture. Anyways, I’ve had some trouble with actually growing it. If you look really closely around the central agar cube in the first photo, you can see what…See More