Harvested Bud. Fungal growth?

Just finished my first grow and am looking for some advice from someone with more experience.

I have some outdoor plants that I cut down a week ago and have hung to dry. One of them had a few spots of what appeared to be powdery mildew on some of the fan leaves in the week or two leading up to harvest. I inspected and removed anything that I suspected was affected, which eventually included some of the smallest buds at the base of the plant. Because of this i wanted to do a very close inspection.

So far, with the naked eye I cannot spot anything obviously out of place, but at the base of a bud next to the stem under the microscope at 60x I see the following:

Am I mistaken or is this fungal growth in the center of the photo?


Here is a shot of the bud I clipped this from:



As mentioned above, I'm lacking in practical experience but am under the impression that with any amount of fungus its best to scrap it. Just don't want to do it without appropriate cause.

Could it just be a piece of fuzz or hair in there?

You may be able to save some by cutting out everything that is affected,

innerG said:

Could it just be a piece of fuzz or hair in there?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.
I don't think its hair. Animal or human hair would appear pretty large relative to the trichomes. I agree that it looks like a piece of fuzz, but it is the origin of the fuzz that concerns me.

You're right to be concerned. If you blow on the nug does it go away?

If you're concerned about the brown splotch on the left of the photo being a spore head, I think it's just the tip of a pistil coming into focus

tazz&indy said:

You may be able to save some by cutting out everything that is affected,

Click to expand...

Yah, I probably could get most of it given enough time and effort, Its difficult to tell from the bud photo, but it really didn't look different from a normal healthy bud. Just nice and frosty. I guess what concerns me is if it is a fungal growth, it would be very difficult to be confident that I got all of it out, not to mention how destructive it is cutting this all up. And taking that a step farther, how easy would it be to smoke infected bud and not know it (paranoid?).

Guess I need to take some classes on Fungi.

I'm probably overthinking all this. I think I will cut up and cure everything that looks good to the naked eye, then scrutinize it once its cured (gives me plenty of time to figure it out). I realize that there is fungus all around us in the air, so the tiny amount possibly in this bud is unlikely to be harmful to me while working on it.

If I decide that it is a concern I will probably seek out some lab testing. After a quick search it appears that this could be done for under $100, so its not prohibitively expensive (considering that my health is on the line). The education it would provide would also be valuable.

Still, I'm interested to hear from anyone in this community who might have more info.

innerG said:

You're right to be concerned. If you blow on the nug does it go away?

If you're concerned about the brown splotch on the left of the photo being a spore head, I think it's just the tip of a pistil coming into focus

Click to expand...

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks that this is worthy of investigation.

I haven't tried blowing on it, I will try to do that and see if I can detect a difference. It will be difficult though, I have to clip the leaves into pretty small pieces to get them under the microscope. Then im taking photos using a camera through the scope! Not ideal and out of about 20 photos, maybe one turns out clear enough to see anything worth posting.

I think I have one that shows more developed growth and looks more like other pictures I have been able to find online where the mold was unmistakable to the naked eye. Still, its a little difficult to tell what I'm seeing.