What are these things growing on my mount near my orchids?

[Papillon24601]

What are these things growing on my mount?

The mount is driftwood that we soaked for about a week, or two weeks to clean out the salt. It is with all our other orchids on the lanai. There is no direct sunlight but plenty of bright shade. I mounted 5 babies, dens and catts, about two weeks ago. I had to turn the mount around as it was too bright for two of the babies. Now I find at least 7 of these black fuzzy things growing on the mount, not yet near any orchids…

Are they bad? Should I kill them? Do I need to worry about spores? HELP Please!!

[cjm3fl]

Alien seed-pods.

Kidding...they look familiar but can't remember.
They DO resemble saltwater anemone..but it's not possible out of saltwater.
Could be a fungus I remember because it looked like that?

[Papillon24601]

Well, parts of Cocoon were filmed near here...

[Optimist]

No idea, they look like... no just kidding, I don't know. I would go with the alien space pods.

---------- Post added at 07:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:48 PM ----------

Sorry, if you haven't noticed there are a few impish jokesters around here. Orchid people are kind of funny types.

[cjm3fl]

I know where some parts of Cocoon were filmed also.
I visited the Coliseum many times, where several parts/scenes were filmed.
Also what I was told were 2 other sites seen in that movie.

AND..the pier was used (visually) as the headquarters for the TV series SeaQuest DSV!

Live in St. Petersburg for about 25 years.
Love that city!

[estación seca]

I can't see them on the second photo, so I don't have any idea how big they are. My best guess would be the fruiting bodies of some fungus, after the long soak.

[Michaeljrdn13]

It's a slime mold. Stemonitis to be exact. It must have been dormant in the wood. We see this when we go Mushroom hunting after a good soaking rain. Seeing as it uses wood as a host, I'm not certain but doubt it would cause any adverse effects to your orchid. Here is another picture. If you have a loop or magnifying glass, you should take a closers look. The fruiting bodies are like little tubes.

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[PaphMadMan]

Fruiting body of Stemonitis slime mold. Yes, they will shed spores. They only eat dead wood, so no direct threat to orchids. They aren't susceptible to typical fungicides so I have no idea what to do to control them. No harm in just scraping them off when they show up, at least not spread the spores.

[Tindomul]

Originally Posted by Michaeljrdn13

It's a slime mold. Stemonitis to be exact. It must have been dormant in the wood. We see this when we go Mushroom hunting after a good soaking rain. Seeing as it uses wood as a host, I'm not certain but doubt it would cause any adverse effects to your orchid. Here is another picture. If you have a loop or magnifying glass, you should take a closers look. The fruiting bodies are like little tubes.

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Excellent ID job. That is just so cool. But hey, everyone was not that far off is saying aliens. Slime molds are so very bizarre.