Nature Study: Mold (Lesson #205) Lichen, Bracket Fungus (Lesson 200) and Moss (Lesson #197) or Nature Study Can Be Found in the Most Unusual Places

"The spores of mold are everywhere and help to make what we call dust. These spores will grow on any substance which gives them nourishment, if the temperature is warm, the air is moist, and the sunlight is excluded." -Handbook of Nature Study, page 728

You know that you are in a homeschooling family when you find a moldy orange in the bag of oranges and get excited. I took photos of the orange from all sides. In this first picture you can see the various colors of the mold. I do not know whether they are different stages of growth or different types growing on the same orange. In this next picture you can see that the mold made the orange skin split open where it is still untouched by visible mold. Could the mold be stretching the skin so that it made the skin split? We tried to look at it with a magnifying glass, but could not see the individual mold spores, but we could only see a rough surface. I showed them a sketch of mold spores magnified.It was interesting to note that the sticker and the little place where the stem connected to the orange were still in place, untouched so far by the mold.

Other Fungus

Lichen
Lichens are a complex life form that is a symbiotic partnership of two separate organisms, a fungus and an alga. The dominant partner is the fungus, which gives the lichen the majority of its characteristics, from its thallus shape to its fruiting bodies. The alga can be either a green alga or a blue-green alga, otherwise known as cyanobacteria. Many lichens will have both types of algae.

Moss

Mosses are nonvascular spore-bearing land plants. They do not have the water carrying "veins" of what we typically think of as plants, and instead water directly from their surroundings through osmosis, which keeps them rather short.