soil | The Library of Obscure Wonders

October 23, 2014

Moon Poo, Wolf Milk, Tree Hair And other types of Slime

An illustration of slime moulds

“There is only one rule to life” said my biology teacher on one of his more whimsical days “for every rule you find you can always find something that breaks it”.

Ignoring the obvious contradiction he preceded to educate us in a creature that was not animal or plant, not multi-cellular or single cellular, but very possibly alien.

In 1973 in Dallas, Texas, firefighters were called out because a strange yellow blob was attacking a telephone pole. The firefighters tried to subdue it with hoses, but the creature grew bigger and climbed up the pole. Locals feared an alien invasion. Yellow blobs had recently been appearing on their lawns and now this giant blob was seemingly eating the telephone pole. Luckily, a local university scientist identified the oozing slime as F. septica. a harmless slime mould.

It is unusual for slime moulds to be this large, they are usually tiny, very slimy and not a mould. Having been banished from the fungi class in recent history for having very little relation to a fungi, they now have their very own kingdom, yet still perplex scientists as to where exactly they fit in. They come in many different colours – yellow, pink, white, green, brown, black – and have many different common names such as Tree Hair, Bubble Gum, Chocolate tubes, Wolf Milk , Dog Vomit and Caca de Luna (Moon Poo) which I’m informed is delicious when fried.

There are two main types of Slime Mold, the Plasmordial – basically one great big cell with many nuclei – and the Cellular – these spend most of their life as single celled amoeba but when food gets short a chemical signal is released and they come together to form “slugs”, with head part, body and tale, that go wondering off to find somewhere better.

At some point they then turn into fruiting bodies, with some of them being sacrificed in order to do this. Their life cycle intrigues scientists for the questions it raises about altruism.

A fairly recent Slime Mould discovery is that although they don’t have a brain, or anything even approaching, they do use a type of external memory. Hansel and Gretal style. Build a small maze in a petri dish, on one side of the maze put your Slime Mould, on the other put a delicious food supply. The Slime mould will work its way round the maze leaving behind a slime trail so it knows where it has been before and doesn’t return there.

Life-cycle of a Slime Mould

Whats more these things are all around, everyday, lurking in the corners of your life, in the garden, in the town, maybe in your house. So with their ability to exist as both single and multi-celluar organisms, their altruism, being able to find their way through mazes, and most of all their ability to still completely baffle humans, slime moulds are fantastic! (And are the future)

October 8, 2012

Cupboard Exploration: The Last Days of Half an Onion

So 2005 I finished the painting commission, discovered nematode worms, and realised that the everyday world really was full of weird and amazing things. One day, on a clean out of my kitchen cupboard (disgustingly dirty) I discovered half an onion that had started sprouting a shoot. It was beautiful so I kept it and wrote this short diary about it:

28th March 2005

Half an onion was discovered at the very back of the kitchen cupboard amongst a quantity of crumbs of indeterminate origin and a dried up carrot. It’s outer skin has started to rot, but from its centre emerges a large white horn, bareing a striking resembalance to what may be described as a minature Rhino’s horn, only far whiter. I took it out of the cupboard and placed it on the window sill.

14th April 2005

The horn has grown so quickly it is four times larger now than it was when I found it (in fact it grew from 3.3cm to 14.1cm approx), and it’s tip has turned green. I did think that I should sit down in front of it and watch it for a whole day, but grew bored with that and gave up. Instead I looked up some health facts about onions on the internet (I’m feeling rather cold ridden today).

Health facts about onions that I was oblivious to before my onion discovery:

‘They appear to be at least somewhat effective against colds, heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases and contain antiinflammatory, anticholesterol, and anticancer components.

In many parts of the underdeveloped world, onions are used to heal blisters and boils. In the United States, products that contain onion extract (such as “Mederma”) are used in the treatment of topical scars.’ Wikipedia

18th April 2005

It has now started growing another horn like shoot, plus the first horn has developed two offshoots. I’ve given it a bit of water, though not being watered at all didn’t seem to bother it. I guess it gets nourishment from what remains of the onion. I decided to paint a picture of it.

: Watercolour and pen sketch of the onion sitting on the kitchen window sill.

21st April 2005

Although the abandoned state seen above is clearly aesthetically pleasing (the curved onion base tilting slightly forwards to balance the horn, giving a sense of strain and desperation that can only be felt by the liberated onlooker) I’ve decided to plant the onion in a small brown ceramic bowl with a little mud. I felt that in order to fully explore the onion growing process I needed to encourage growth and that the best way to do this might be to plant it.

29th April 2005

The onion has continued to grow, I give it a single drop of water every day. I have decided to explore the biological constituency of the onion further. I dig part of it up and peel off a tiny bit of inner skin. From this I peel off a transparent film which I put on a slide and dye with a drop of iodine, I then put the slide under the microscope.

This activity is one of the first uses of an optical microscope that most students encounter in a biology lab. Onions are used because they have large cells that are easily visible under a microscope and the preparation of a thin section is very straight forward..An onion is made of many concentric layers. Each layer is separated by a thin skin or membrane.

30 May 2005

The half an onion grew rapidly for a bit but now appears to be dying. I did it up out of its ceramic bowl and place it on the window sill. It has a different type of beauty now, full of rich purples, deep reds, and the withering of its stems has a dramatic appeal.

: Evidence, 12ft by 8ft Oil painting on Canvas. This very large painting was done from a sketch of the dying onion. I won Challenge the Nail art prize that year and had my first solo London show. I painted this picture for that. Why so large I don’t know, perhaps I was paying my respects to the onion somehow, or appeasing the god of onions.

September 23, 2012

Nematode Worms

Ink drawing of a nematode worm on paper, by JV Roberts

Pen drawing of a nematode worm by JV Roberts.

One in every 8 creatures is a nematode worm.

Several years ago I undertook a painting commission for a Scientist at Cancer Research UK. I remember he took me on a tour of his laboratory and on casually looking down a microscope I discovered these, nematode worms. They looked incredible! I could see their insides and watch their digestive systems in action.

Although the Scientist’s information on his research into human blood cells was both fascinating and baffling, it is the visual memory of the beautiful nematode worms that sticks with me the most, and the knowledge that they’re everywhere and I never even knew they existed.

A handful of soil will contain thousands of microscopic worms. Nematodes are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth. In size they can range from 0.3mm to over 8 metres (found in the guts of whales).Both parasitic and free living types exist and they live in almost every environment, from fresh water to oceans, mud, desert, the bottom of gold mines, it is rumoured that there is even a type of nematode that have developed to live in beer matts.

“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable, since for every massing of human beings there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”

Nathan Cobb, Author of Nematodes and there Relationships 1914

1 Comment