I sampled a seed pod from a deciduous that was turning yellow for the Fall. I chose to sample this seed pod because I never noticed structures like that growing on a deciduous tree before (they looked like very spiky balls, kind of like small chestnuts) and I thought it would be interesting to see if there would be fungi growing on them. The tree that the seed pod was obtained from looked healthy, but there were some brown dots on the leaves of the tree which may be indicative of disease/decomposition. The trunk and majority of the leaves looked healthy though, which suggests the tree is healthy. There were green and brown seed pods on the tree, but I decided to take a brown seed pod to sample from because I’m assuming that it’s starting to decompose (since it’s slightly dried out and brown). As such, I expect there to be some fungi present on this sample (relative to the green pods), however, the seed pod is rather hard and tough, and I’m not sure if there would be many fungi willing to break something like that down for nutrients. I’m also not sure how many fungi tend to be found in these kinds of structures on trees, therefore I am assuming that I will only get a few fungi from this plate.
