Kevin Starr
County Extension Director
N.C. Cooperative Extension Service

June 14, 2008

BEEN SLIMED LATELY?

When you hear the word, “slime”, what do you think of? It makes me remember a popular kids’ show that was on years ago where people got green slime dumped on their heads if they said “I don’t know”. My daughters liked to watch it and it was fun for adults too.

Just recently, I’ve had some questions about landscape problems that both have slime in the name. In fact, we’ve had several calls about a problem named “slime mold”. Slime mold is an utterly disgusting growth that is usually found on bark mulch. It has no specific shape and some folks describe it as looking like something a dog has thrown up. It can be a variety of colors and eventually becomes dry and dusty.
If slime mold appeared on an old episode of a certain science fiction show set in space, it would no doubt cause big trouble. You remember the ones where the new crewman meets his demise when he goes to check out the problem. But luckily for us, slime mold is mainly an aesthetic problem. The best way to deal with it is just scoop it up and dispose of it.

There is another type of slime mold you may see that produces a grayish coating on a patch of grass. Again, it’s not really much of a problem.

There’s another slime problem I had a question about recently—slime flux. Slime flux, also called wetwood, is characterized by a dark, foul-smelling liquid that oozes out of a well-established tree. It runs down the tree, forming a dark, stained area. This problem is caused by bacteria. A good whiff of the stuff will reveal an alcohol smell due to the fermentation going on. You may see insects which are attracted to this area.

While this often creates concern for the owners of the tree, it’s not likely to harm the tree and should disappear eventually. There’s really nothing you can do about the situation anyway.

Most of the problems we see in the landscape aren’t quite as weird as slime mold and slime flux.
If you have questions we can help with, please call Cooperative Extension at 704-736-8452.