On one of my daughter’s recent Strumpshaw Fen fungi survey days, with the woodland more open from bracken and nettles, we decided to visit the fallen trunk where—back in April 2023—we had discovered what we thought were spent fruiting bodies of Badhamia utricularis.

To our wonderment we saw a stunning and beautiful array of what is undoubtedly Badhamia utricularis in three stages of development.

In the photos above and below you can see the juvenile, orange-yellow, globular sporangia and if you look closely you can see white iridescence specks on sporangia surface.

As they mature, the sporangia turn various shades of bluish-grey.

The photos below show the largest plasmodium that we had both ever seen:

Below is a marked up photo of the trunk showing the locations of the stages that we saw. The orange area was where the plasmodium was, the yellow area—the juvenile, orange-yellow sporangia and the blue area—the mature, bluish-grey sporangia.

On the other side of the trunk shown above, was some Pheblia radiata (Wrinkled Crust). In the photo below you can see the leading front of the B. utricularis plasmodium, with it’s veined network behind, moving across and consuming the P. radiata [1].

References:

[1] Bruce Ing – Tansley Review No. 62, The phytosociology of myxomycetes, New Phytologist – Page 187