More about star jelly

During the past few years, we have seen star jelly on a number of occasions. The most common time to find it seems to be autumn, though it is not unknown for it to be found at other times of the year.

There are a number of pictures of star jelly on our original post, but here I want to post some pictures which I believe are NOT star jelly.

The picture above, taken on Eigg, just might be star jelly, but the quantity was extremely small and I had noticed what appeared to be slime moulds several times in the previous couple of days, so I think it is most likely that this is also a slime mould. In the picture below, there is a slightly yellowish fruiting body, and behind it and out of focus is some pure jelly, and I think it most likely that this consists only of the slime mould.

One of the commonest and most likely theories about star jelly is that it is frog spawn, most likely rejected by a bird which was eating the frog. Birds dropping this from a height could be the reason why the jelly was thought to come from the stars.

In the picture above, there are black eggs to the right of the jelly, and a cluster of eggs can also be seen in the picture below.

Unlike the other pictures which were taken in the autumn, those with eggs were taken in March.

Read "Star Jelly Mystery solved on iSpot" for more information about the frogspawn theory, though this doesn't explain why star jelly is most commonly found in the autumn rather than the spring.

Star jelly

This evening there was a broadcast on UK radio 4 about the mystery of "star jelly."

You can read about it on BBC Scotland outdoors.

Although some theories have been suggested, there is no certainty as to what "star jelly" is. It is rather unlikely that it has fallen from the stars.

When we listened to the programme, we realised that we had found some star jelly on a walk on 22nd September 2008.

It was lying on grass at the edge of a farm road and looked like featureless transparent jelly. We thought that it might be a slime mould.

We took some of the star jelly home, and when Fred examined it under his microscope he could see small black dots and transparent hair-like structures.

22nd August 2009

Today I found more star jelly. This time it was at 675m on a Scottish hill, close to a small pool. You can see it in the foreground in this picture.

The most favoured explanation now seems to be that star jelly is unfertilised frog or toad spawn which is left when the frog/toad has been eaten by a predator.

19th September 2009

The Times has published an article on star jelly today

4th November 2009

Yet more star jelly. A friend found this while we were out on a walk together. Once again, it was on grass on open moorland.

We returned on 15th November and the star jelly was still there, though it had been trampled and didn't look so fresh. We also found two more lots of star jelly, each more than 1 km apart so apparently unrelated to each other. This suggests that it cannot be uncommon, at least not in this area.

3rd October 2010

More star jelly, this time near Helensburgh.

For some more far-fetched explanations as to what star jelly is, see the New Scientist and the Mearns Leader among others.