When bread is old, it develops a furry, green or gray coat called mold.
Mold is actually a patch of tiny plants which grow more rapidly than the weeds in your garden. Since no one “plants” this mold on the bread, where then does it come from?
The plant’s spores, which are its reproductive bodies, float around in the air until they find some place to land.
They are too tiny to even be seen when they are floating about. But when they land, usually on warm, moist bread, they begin to grow just like seeds do in warm, moist soil.
As they grow, they send more spores into the air and onto the bread as well.
Each tiny mold plant, when seen under a microscope, has two branches, a longer one with little black balls (the spores) and a shorter one, which acts like a root, penetrating into the bread and absorbing food.
Interestingly, a mold’s diet is quite varied.
Not only will it grow on bread, but also on meat, vegetables, and even shoes, clothes, and books if they’re in warm, moist areas.
A mold, similar to the one found on bread, is grown in special tanks by scientists and produces one of the marvels of modern medicine, penicillin.
Read more about mold safety and health impacts here:
http://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/indoor/indoor-air-pollutants/mold-and-dampness.html
Related Posts
-
Where Does Black Mold Come From and What Is the Best Way To Remove Black Mold That Grows On Damp Walls?
The infamous black mold is the fungus Aspergillus niger. The reason it seems so difficult to eradicate is that the visible black manifestation is merely the exposed structure of the fungus, which is…
-
Where does Mold and Mildew come from and What is the best way to remove Mold in the home?
Laundry rooms and wet clothes are famous locations for molds and mildew. What are these things? They're fungi, plants without chlorophyll, microscopic members of the same family of plants as mushrooms. And there…
-
How Does Slime Mold Move?
Deep in the darkness it grows, feeding itself by sucking on the damp, rotting world around it. Then, at a signal from some mysterious clock, the blob creeps upward, finally emerging into the…
-
What Is a Slime Mold?
A slime mold may sound like a disease or an infection, but it's actually a very odd plant. It's so odd, in fact, that scientists once thought the slime mold was an animal.…
-
How Is Scandinavian Blue Cheese Toxic In Large Quantities and Is Mold On Cheese Poisonous?
The mold that normally produces blue cheese produces traces of toxic substances, but not enough to hurt a human being in the quantities normally consumed. Almost all blue cheeses are ripened by the…
-
Where does Buckwheat come from and Can I make bread out of Buckwheat Flour?
Buckwheat isn't wheat at all, and even if it were, its flour couldn't make bread. Buckwheat groats, known as kasha in eastern Europe and sayraisin in France, are the seeds of the plant…
