What in the Woods Is That?

Play our biweekly guessing game!

Whatever draws us into the forest—be it birdwatching or logging, hiking or hunting—all of us are unified by the sense of wonder we feel in the outdoors. The forests, fields, and streams of our region are full of mystery, and if you stop and look closely, you’ll see all sorts of oddities.

Below find a picture of one such woodlands curio. Guess what it is and you’ll be eligible to win a Northern Woodlands woodpecker magnet designed by artist Liz Wahid. A prize winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. The correct answer, and the winner’s name, will appear when the next column is posted and in our newsletter (sign up here!).

Baffling Bundles

We found these weird brown bundles fastened to a log. What are they?

Answer

These are the sporangia (fruiting bodies) of chocolate tube slime mold, or tree hair. Slime molds aren’t fungi, but organisms with a lifecycle that includes a unicellular amoeba stage, and a stage in which amoebas merge to form a single-celled, multinucleate living blob. Check out this link (best read in a British accent) to see different stages of chocolate tube slime development.

This week’s contest winner was Missy Bruce