One species each day (from my backyard)

It had been a cold, wet and windy day with snow in many place but not here. I didn't hear the rain so I thought it had stopped until I was about to step outside and realised it was probably too wet for the camera and lens. Luckily I had put an apple with a blackspot (apple scab they say in certain other parts of the world) in a jar with a layer of water, expecting it to produce a nice velvety mat of spores as an emergency species from my backyard. So I decided to take a picture of this instead. The fungus that causes these spots on apples is Venturia inaequalis. It was because of this disease that I was first employed in New Zealand in 1993. My job involved travelling the entire country to collect apples and leaves with these symptoms and grow them on agar plates to test them later on for their resistance to certain fungicides. Although they are an eyesore to all apple growers around the world, they were the start of my career in our new country so this fungus has a very special place in my heart.