Mouldy conkers

Over the last few weeks I have blipped a few mushrooms, the large spore producing bodies of fungi. Today, something rather smaller and less showy, a mould.

Moulds, 0r molds as our American cousins would have it, are fungi that grow in the form of a mass of multi-celled filaments called hyphae. There are thousands of known species of moulds and so I have no idea as to the identity of this species growing on conkers.

Molds reproduce by producing large numbers of small spores, which may be asexual or sexual although many species can produce both types. Using the lens, a cluster of yellowish spore producing organs can be see at the centre of the conker shell at the lower right of the photograph.

Moulds are important components of the ecosystem, breaking down and re-cycling dead things. This virtue can become a problem to us when they turn their attention to rotting our wooden structures!

Moulds are also useful to us in many ways including food production (cheese, quorn, soy sauce) and the manufacture of many pharmaceuticals (penicillin and other antibiotics, lovastatin a cholesterol reducing drug and cyclosporin used to suppress the rejection of transplanted organs)