Searching the board for ‘apple’ has made me appreciate just how many times the Macintosh vs Microsoft Holy War has been waged. But it didn’t answer the question on my mind.
Twice, now, I’ve brought home apples from the store and found a little ball of fuzz two or three millimetres in diameter clinging to the skin of the fruit down in the little pit that surrounds the stem. I’m not certain about last time, but this time it’s on an apple of the ‘Empire’ variety.
I’ve removed it from the fruit. It was stubborn, being attached by a mass of white stringy things not unlike a cobweb.
There are two black specks of something clinging to it that weren’t visible before.
Disrobed of it’s cobweb-strings, it’s semi-transparent, with a notable dark mass inside, somewhat off-centre.
Sectioned, it’s revealed to be a thin-walled capsule containing a clear fluid. The dark mass, when ruptured, leaks a red-brown fluid. And it has a weak, but unpleasant scent.
The apple itself seems no worse for wear. After removal of the item, the skin seems undamaged. Some of the cobweb-string-things remain.
I don’t have my microscope here, so this is that’s about all i can tell you. I looked at a few of the sites that google turned up, including a fruit pathogen diagnostic key, to no avail.
So: What’s this fuzzy thing on my apple?