Slime

A couple of days ago I blipped the gills on underside of the porcelain mushroom Oudemansiella mucida. When mature these mushrooms are strikingly white and translucent as their common name suggests, but whilst immature the upper surface is, as here, pale brownish-grey in colour, surprisingly complex in structure, and very slimy. Use the naturalist's lens and see if you can spot the tiny insect drowning in the slime.

The porcelain mushroom fungus infests and feeds upon the wood of dead beech trees, and very occasionally dead oaks. The mushrooms themselves appear in the autumn, often with large numbers erupting from a single tree. They are usually the only fungus present on an infected tree because they release a powerful fungicide that deters or even annihilates competing species of fungus. Known as strobilurins, these anti-fungal agents have found use in agriculture to protect crops from attacks by powdery mildews and other fungi. Although now much improved upon by industrial chemists, the first strobilurin fungicides were isolated from wood-rotting mushroom fungi such as Oudemansiella mucida.