Monday, May 14, 2012

Past its Use-by Date .....



If you have ever gone away on holiday and forgot that you left some cheese in the cheese dish, then ....



..... this will be a familiar sight when you return home. This slab of Cheddar has become .........




...... a battleground for fungal colonies ............
























....... that jostle for supremacy when the colonies collide, and in doing so create a rather attractive, furry abstract design.
























Once the mould has smothered the cheese surface it's time to reproduce ....
























..... via stalked sporangia ......
























.... that resemble little white pom-poms...
























.... each of which releases .......























... vast numbers of these minute conidiospores, each just a few thousands of a millimetre in diameter.

1 comment:

  1. ah, my 'fridge as a teenager.

    Delightfully fuzzy shots!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.