The color of the powdery print, called a spore print, is used to help classify mushrooms and can help to identify them.

All Armillaria species have a white spore print and none have a volva ( compare Amanita ).

have a yellowish to greenish yellow cast and a dark brown to grey-brown spore print.

Galerina has a dark brown spore print and is deadly poisonous ( alpha-amanitin ) – see: mushroom poisoning.

The spore print is white, a common feature of Amanita.

Making a spore print of the mushroom Volvariella volvacea shown in composite: ( photo lower half ) mushroom cap laid on white and dark paper ; ( photo upper half ) cap removed after 24 hours showing pinkish-tan spore print.

The spore print of a mushroom is an important diagnostic character in most handbooks for identifying mushrooms.

A mushroom cannot be identified from its spore print alone ; the spore print is only one characteristic used in making a taxonomic determination.

The spore wall has been shown to possess three layers, the middle of which is composed primarily of cellulose, and the innermost is sensitive to cellulase and pronase.

Differentiation is the formation of cell types, from what is originally one cell – the zygote or spore.

A spore often has a protrusion at one end, called an apiculus, which is the point of attachment to the basidium, termed the apical germ pore, from which the hypha emerges when the spore germinates.

The typical fungal spore size is 1-40 micrometer in length.

Although the botulinum toxin is destroyed by thorough cooking over the course of a few minutes, the spore itself is not killed by the temperatures reached with normal sea-level-pressure boiling, leaving it free to grow and again produce the toxin when conditions are right.

The name " endospore " is suggestive of a spore or seed-like form ( endo means within ), but it is not a true spore ( i. e. not an offspring ).

The spore is sometimes surrounded by a thin covering known as the exosporium, which overlies the spore coat.

The spore coat, which acts like a sieve that excludes large toxic molecules like lysozyme, is resistant to many toxic molecules and may also contain enzymes that are involved in germination.

The core contains the spore chromosomal DNA which is encased in chromatin-like proteins known as SASPs ( small acid-soluble spore proteins ), that protect the spore DNA from UV radiation and heat.

The arrangement of spore layers is as follows:

The DNA is replicated and a membrane wall known as a spore septum begins to form between it and the rest of the cell.

It is commonly characterised by rupture or absorption of the spore coat, swelling of the endospore, an increase in metabolic activity, and loss of resistance to environmental stress.

Once crossed, the dikaryons are established and a second spore stage is formed, numbered " I " and called aecia, which form dikaryotic aeciospores in dry chains in inverted cup-shaped bodies embedded in host tissue.

On the primary host a repeating spore stage is formed, numbered " II ", the urediospores in dry pustules called uredinia.

The under surface of the cap is made of thin tubes, the site of spore production ; they are deep, and whitish in colour when young, but mature to a greenish-yellow.

Many Earth plants and animals undergo major biochemical changes during their life cycles as a response to changing environmental conditions, for example, by having a spore or hibernation state that can be sustained for years or even millennia between more active life stages.

(" Sausage poisoning " was a common problem in 18th and 19th century Germany, and was most likely caused by botulism ) However, isolates from subsequent outbreaks were always found to be anaerobic spore formers, so Ida Bengston proposed that the organism be placed into the genus Clostridium as the Bacillus genus was restricted to aerobic spore-forming rods.

By convention the stages and spore states are numbered by Roman numerals.

If the spore is divided into two by a cross-wall ( septum ), it is called a didymospore.

In fungi and fungus-like organisms, spores are often classified by the structure in which meiosis and spore production occurs.

Trilete spores, formed by the dissociation of a spore tetrad, are taken as the earliest evidence of life on land, dating to the mid-Ordovician ( early Llanvirn, ~).

The forcible discharge of single spores termed ballistospores involves formation of a small drop of water ( Buller's drop ), which upon contact with the spore leads to its projectile release with an initial acceleration of more than 10, 000 g. Other fungi rely on alternative mechanisms for spore release, such as external mechanical forces, exemplified by puffballs.

Once attached, the spore germinates by growing a germ tube and eventually locates a stoma by a touch responsive process known as thigmotropism.

In early inquiries before there was an understanding of microbes, much emphasis was given to the prevention of putrefaction, and procedures were carried out to determine the amount of agent that was to be added to a given solution in order to prevent the development of pus and putrefaction ; however, due to a lack of a developed understanding of germ theory this method was inaccurate and, today, an antiseptic is judged by its effect on pure cultures of a defined microbe and / or their vegetative and spore forms.

* The single-celled haploid spore germinates, dividing by the normal process ( mitosis ), which maintains the number of chromosomes at N. The result is a multi-cellular haploid organism, called the gametophyte ( because it produces gametes at maturity ).

When the leaf blade is present, there is not always a spore stalk present, and the plants do not always send up a leaf, sometimes going for a year to a period of years living only under the soil, nourished by association with soil fungi.

* Pern — A planet pelted by a deadly spore ( called Thread ), capable of eating anything but rock and metal, for periods of fifty years every two to four centuries in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern novels.

Less than a decade after the first colony was established, the settlers discovered that their chosen planet was subject to periodic attack from space by the destructive Thread, a spaceborne spore that destroys organic substances on contact.

Pernese biomes have been profoundly affected by the cyclical appearance of Thread, a spore which destroys organic material.

During that stage, it is susceptible to a fatal disease called milky spore disease, caused by a bacterium called milky spore, Paenibacillus ( formerly Bacillus ) popilliae.

The function of a Weyr is to fight Thread, a spore that originates in the Oort cloud of the Rukbat solar system, carried by a planetoid referred to as the Red Star with a loose elliptical orbit.

All bacteria are killed by boiling but they have a spore form that can survive boiling, he correctly contended, citing research by Ferdinand Cohn.

Once conditions are favorable, the spore can develop into a new organism using mitotic division, producing a multicellular gametophyte, which eventually goes on to produce gametes.

Like all ferns, sexual reproduction leads to spore formation, but Azolla sets itself apart from other members of its group by producing two kinds.

These may be apothecia ( spore producing bodies ), isidia or soralia ( both vegetative structures ).