For anyone nerdy enough to wonder about my root gall fungi, here are a pictorial summary of Entorrhiza casparyana on roots of Juncus articulatus.
Lower panel: two galls showing the younger and brighter tips and the older, darker region where mature spores accumulate.
Upper panel: two spores at 1000X. They have very thick walls, up to 5 µm, and the ornamentation of the outer wall is very peculiar with lots of wart-like protrusions. The spores are 22-26 µm wide, almost globose, embedded in a matrix of decaying cells and fungal hyphae, and are dispersed into the wild later with the roots die off. So the dispersal of that fungus is a slow process and needs some assistance of water to be effective at all. This tiny phylum has been around for million of years apparently, so outdo us humans by orders of magnitude -- food for thought?
