Hairy Rock?

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kepPNW
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Hairy Rock?

Post by kepPNW » May 2nd, 2014, 11:52 am

Heh, these little things were growing "straight out of" the rock.

They're only about 1/4" tall. Some kind of fungal spore?

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Trapper Creek Wilderness, 01-May-2014
Karl
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cfm
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Re: Hairy Rock?

Post by cfm » May 2nd, 2014, 1:20 pm

Well that looks like the fruiting body or sporophyte portion of a moss, but the vegetative part (the fine light green stuff covering the rock) does not really look like moss, so perhaps it's another type of bryophte like a liverwort or hornwort.

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kepPNW
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Re: Hairy Rock?

Post by kepPNW » May 2nd, 2014, 5:00 pm

Y'know, it's funny. With my eyes, it certainly looked like a bare rock. So much so, that I didn't even question that until reading your response. Still not totally sure, but the full resolution isn't clear enough to say, either. I didn't think of some sort of moss-like thing. That makes sense, I suppose. There are also those *really* little things sprouting up, less than a half-millimeter high. Weird stuff!
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raven
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Re: Hairy Rock?

Post by raven » May 2nd, 2014, 10:06 pm

Seems kind of extensive, in area, but the "hairs" could be slime mold fruiting bodies. With the other suggestions I wouldn't expect to see bare rockbelow.

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kepPNW
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Re: Hairy Rock?

Post by kepPNW » May 3rd, 2014, 7:06 am

I should've stuck something in there for scale. The rock was about 6" across, and maybe 2/3 of it is pictured. Those taller "things" standing up were, I'm sure, less than 1/4" in height.

Slime mold, huh? Weird! Just did a google-image search on that, and I'm not sure I've ever seen such diversity of results - every darn photo looks to be of something else entirely from all the others!
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raftingdog
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Re: Hairy Rock?

Post by raftingdog » May 4th, 2014, 1:32 pm

creepy-- makes me think of movie Alien 1 Alien2 Alien3

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