Craterium roseum (A slime mould)

Plasmodium:- bright red to maroon in colour often covers extensive areas of bark and earth, likes to hide on undersurfaces of upturned tree roots or decaying wood.

Sporangia:- Gregarious, magenta coloured almost smooth with clusters of lime granules.  As it begins to age the sporocarps look as though they have been sprinkled with icing sugar, just prior to dehiscence when the capillitium becomes visible as a much paler but abundant elastic balls releasing the spores.

The Stalk:-  is erect longitudinally wrinkled ochraceous brown and limeless, expanded at the base into a membranous hypothallus.

Capillitium:- reticulate angular violaceous pink in colour with large lime nodes present. All quite difficult to see among the bright red clusters of granules which make up the outer peridium.

Spores:- are light pinkish brown minutely spinulose with irregularly distributed clusters of darker warts.