Sclerotium

Rarity: Uncommon

A topic a little better known than average, read and translated beyond its own country.

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Notion

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Science and technology

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What Wikipedia says

A sclerotium (; pl.: sclerotia () is a compact mass of hardened fungal mycelium containing food reserves. One role of sclerotia is to survive environmental extremes. In some higher fungi such as ergot, sclerotia become detached and remain dormant until favorable growth conditions return. Sclerotia initially were mistaken for individual organisms and described as separate species until Louis René Tulasne proved in 1853 that sclerotia are only a stage in the life cycle of some fungi. Further investigation showed that this stage appears in many fungi belonging to many diverse groups. Sclerotia are important in the understanding of the life cycle and reproduction of fungi, as a food source, as medicine (for example, ergotamine), and in agricultural blight management.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article “Sclerotium”, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Read the article on Wikipedia

Image: Dominique Jacquin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.