Families and relatives of the dead cry as they identify their family members at a temporary burial ground March 25, 2011 in Higashi Matsushima , Japan. (Photo by Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)

Stemonitis axifera is a species of slime mold. It fruits in clusters on dead wood, and has distinctive tall reddish-brown sporangia, supported on slender stalks. The species was first described as Trichia axifera by Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard in 1791. Thomas Huston MacBride transferred it to the genus Stemonitis in 1889. Stemonitis fasciculata and Stemonitis smithii are synonyms.