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CHARACTERISTICS OF FUNGI: SPORES

Fungal spores can come in all different shapes and sizes. I talked about the spores of Septoria being long and spaghetti-like. I showed you the picture of powdery mildew spores, which are rather oval. Some types of fungal spores, like the ones in this picture, are kind of canoe-shaped or banana-shaped, and are multi-cellular. These happen to be spores of a fungus called Fusarium. Certain species of this fungus can be quite aggressive plant pathogens, and cause root rots. And, Fusarium species tend to be quite prolific spore producers. They produce lots and lots of spores. What’s interesting about these is they are multi-cellular, so if you see all of those little lines inside the spore, these are cross-walls, like we talked about when we were discussing hyphae, and they divide that big spore into individual cells. And, each one of those cells can potentially germinate, form a fungal thread or a hypha, and infect a plant. So a lot of potential for infection in this particular case. You may notice that these spores look kind of greenish. That’s not their natural color. They tend to be colorless. The reason they’re green here is because this particular photo was taken with a green filter.