Physarum · Track 16 · middle
Ode to Didymium squamulosum
Coated in lime crystals — calcium carbonate deposits on the sporangium surface, giving it a gritty, chalky, almost frosted texture found in no other myxomycete. Why? Possibly UV protection. Possibly pH regulation near the spore mass. Possibly neither — a byproduct of metabolic processes that serves no selected function. An ode to the armor that may not be armor — the coating that may have no purpose except to exist, crystalline and inexplicable, a solution to a problem that may never have been posed. | NEUROSCIENCE LENS: Calcium signaling — Didymium deposits calcium carbonate on its surface, and calcium (Ca2+) is the most fundamental second messenger in cellular signaling, including in neurons. Action potentials, synaptic vesicle fusion, gene expression — all calcium-gated. The lime crystal coating may be metabolic byproduct or may be functional. Either way: calcium is everywhere the story gets interesting.
Lyrics
[Intro] After the rain, on the dark wet leaf litter. There you are. Not shining, but frosted. [Verse 1] You wear a coat of chalk. A gritty white dust over your whole body. My hand lens shows the facets, the tiny crystals. Calcium carbonate. Persoon gave you a name in 1801. He saw the shape, the stalk, the color. He never wrote down why you wear this armor. If it is armor. [Chorus] A solution to a problem that was never posed. The lime coating for a sun that doesn't burn you. The crystal shell for a world that doesn't strike. Are you just the dust left over? The byproduct of a thing I cannot understand? The armor that is not armor. [Verse 2] I touch the surface of another, a fallen one. The texture is fine, a mineral powder. It smells of damp earth and stone. I see you on decaying wood, on last year's grass. A thousand tiny, frosted spheres. Each one carrying a question on its skin. Each one inexplicable and complete. [Bridge] And the calcium that coats you… Is the calcium that fires in me. The second messenger. The charge that opens the gate. The spark that crosses the synaptic gap. It’s the signal for the vesicle to release. It’s the ion that writes the memory. Everywhere the story gets interesting, there is calcium. [Chorus] A solution to a problem that was never posed. The lime coating for a sun that doesn't burn you. The crystal shell for a world that doesn't strike. Are you just the dust left over? The byproduct of a thing I cannot understand? The armor that is not armor. [Outro] I pull back the lens. I leave you to your reasons. Frosted in the cool morning light.