Today I noticed a… phenomenon in my yard. In one, but not both, of the flower beds that borders my front walkway there’s a… I don’t know, an organism. I put some pictures up on my blog here. It’s on some plants, growing out of some mulch, and maybe on the exposed edges of some cardboard that went into the bed (it’s a lasagna bed.) It’s seriously creepy! White or maybe grey, with almost a crystalline form. That phlox in the first picture is blooming out of season, probably because it’s desperately trying to reproduce before it gets engulfed. I’m really ooged out by this. Any ideas on what it could be and how to get rid of it? (We have had a lot of rain lately; the area drains fine but there’s been a lot of water around.)
It looks like a slime mold; (at Wikipedia).
It’ll go away when the weather dries.
If you’d like to drive it mad, feed it a little cyclic AMP or Prozac.
Is that the thing that I learned in middle school science is sort of both a plant and an animal, or is that outdated?
Also, I have dog-vomit fungus?! I thought it was gross that I caught ringworm at work, but dog-vomit fungus?
If the dog-vomit fungus squicks you out, you can scrape it up with a shovel and dispose of it, but it, too, will go away when the weather dries.
Just be glad you don’t ALSO have this , a stinkhorn fungus also known as a dog penis mushroom. Ewwwwwwww!
Yes. They’re like swarming amoebas. In some species the individual cells will actually merge into a single blob of protoplasm containing thousands of nuclei. The classification of protists has changed markedly over the last 30 years, so whatever they taught you in middle school is probably now wrong. -yet life goes on. 
Hey, middle school wasn’t 30 years ago, bucko! (My mom’s still running on two kingdoms, plant and animal. At least I got five.)
Whippersnapper!
Yeah, that wasn’t the best phrasing, was it? Sorry to have implied you are as ancient as I.
It just seems that every time I turn around, they change something.
Aren’t there more than five kingdoms now or something? I probably am woefully out of touch.
Six kingdoms. The new one is Archaea.
Christ, how do you keep up? No wonder old people just give up.
Now just hold on! Six? What the heck? When did this happen? And please speek up so I can hear you. Everybody mutters these days. Damn kids.
Geez, let’s get this striaght…so, the kingdoms are counting up, and the planets are counting down? :dubious: (LoL)
Zsofia, I didn’t see any pics in your blog. Why is this? - Jinx
You didn’t see any pics of anything? Works for me on Firefox and IE…
Yeah, not only are the kingdoms up and planets down, did you know the panda is a bear again? No kidding.