What is this Jelly stuff

[happybonzo]

At no particular time of the year I have been noticing an odd jelly substance in the fields. Sometimes it's in clumps and some times just one lump about the size of a scone.

Reminds me of wall paper paste.

Looked around the web loads of different ideas ranging from exploding frogs through fungi to meteorite debris! Seems to happen when it's wet and moist, never when freezing through all seasons I think but in summer only early in the morning or shady areas.

Here's a link http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/outdoors/articles/jelly/

Any ideas - and before anyone asks "No, Ihaven't tasted it!"

[carlight]

thanks for a great link !

[Dennis]

It's fungus - take a look on this blog:

http://tswcalendar.blogspot.com/2010/01/witches-butter-and-jelly-drops.html

which has some excellent photos of such stuff.

[Rod Taylor]

Found the same in our wood recently and had it under the microscope. Shows up as almost clear with no defineable structure, virtually water with scattered minute irregular particles.

Most reasonable explanation found seems to be that it is Nostoc - a genus of cyanobacteria that is invisible on the ground but swells up into a jelly like mass after rain. From what we have read it would appear that you ought to be able to see evidence of filaments when viewed under a microscope.

So basically we still have a question mark beside the photograph of the sample found in our wood.