I kept a Lion’s mane petri dish stored in the fridge for well over a year.

I decided to make an attempt at refreshing it by transferring into fresh petri dishes. After a week I noticed some strong mycelium growth.

After inoculating a grain jar with one of the cultures, I decided to have a look under the microscope to double check, just in case… And that’s when I noticed a morphology that I had never seen before. It looked nothing like Lion’s Mane. The full length of the mycelium is covered with these pegs with a sphere at the end.

After some searching, I am almost convinced that this is a Verticillium sp. - a new contaminant for me!

I then checked all of the petri dishes and they are all this same fungus. So, time to get a new fresh culture 😅