Mastodawn

A couple of months ago, I thought I'd found a small, but perfectly formed, lump of black pearl slime mould just outside our back door. Each "sporangium" was about 2 mm across and looked perfectly black.

Subsequently, I found two other lumps in a direct line to the pond...

As an experiment, I scraped up a very sticky lump and dropped it into a bucket of water. Within half an hour, it was expanding and showing transparent albumen and central black nuclei. Frog's eggs... Somebody couldn't wait!

#frogspawn #frogs

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Jonathan Littlewood

I had scraped all the frogspawn off the ground I could and dumped it into a bucket. Most of the spawn had dried out too much and wasn't viable, but we thought we had 13 tadpoles.

Today, it was time to move them into a container more suitable for froglets, though there is no sign of embryonic legs yet. I moved them one by one and was thrilled to find that we have 27 healthy and lively tadpoles.

#frogspawn #frogs