The great taste of slime

[ian]

It wasn't intentional but when you're growing slime mold by the square meter it gets all over the place.  Physarum is very earthy and rather bitter.  I'll be a bit more careful washing my hands 

[Heather Barnett]

I think there's a species of slime mould that is a delicacy in Mexico, sautéed with a bit of garlic and chilli perhaps. 

How're the large colonies growing? Do you have any photos? Does the growth behaviour change at scale? 

Is there a world record for largest slime mould? ... Can you beat it?

:)

[ian]

They call it Caca de Luna - which doesn't really sell it as a food stuff any more than the name slime mould does. 

I'm limited by space to 22cm discs for the big slimes - starting from a couple of oats it only takes five days to get to that size by feeding twice a day. 

Once the pressures off I'll try raising a really huge one. People have claimed to have found plasmodia hundreds of miles across in forest subsoil, I don't really believe that's still a continuous organism just a widespread population of genetically identical individuals - If I used the same sampling criteria then Mazie now extends from Scandinavia to Australia ( which would be really cool but I think I'd run out of oats )

They're quite dull when they're this big - a cowpat sized mass of mucous covered oats with so much food they've no need to explore, my big concern is someone forgetting to feed them at the end of the day as there's enough mass there to cover the entire stand in physarum. 

To make the sclerotia I put these onto beds of fresh wet paper and let them run for a day - that does prodice some stunning patterns.  Remove the oat mass to a fresh tray and let the remaining physarum dry in the dark. If you don't remove the oat mass then they just return to it. 

I've taken time lapse footage of all of this which I will put up once I've rendered it. I'm doing a few mazes and maps too.

 

[François-Joseph Deminiere]

Hi,

I don't know what "Caca" means in English but it's meaning in French is poo-poo... And I bet "Caca de luna" have the same meaning in Mexican Spanish so I've read that as "Moon's Poo poo". No doubt about taste then...

:-)

FJD