This is the snow mold season. You probably don’t need me to tell you that if you maintain a lawn hereabouts. Why? Because as the snow cover disappears, after one of our long winters, a fuzzy gray to white network of delicate fungal hype is often exposed. This mold comes in pink as well, but it is usually gray.
You know how I am always pointing out that there is more microbial activity at the interface of snow and lawn in the winter than all summer long? This is a great example. It is doing its thing under the snow. When summer comes, snow mold remains dormant in the soil in something of a knot of hypha known as a sclerotia.
Then, when exposed to low temperatures and a wet environment, such as in early spring during snow melt, it forms fruiting bodies known as sporocarps. This is the start of the mycelium fungal network which spreads into and throughout the lawn’s soils. Snow mold, caused by Typhula spp., thrives.
Truth be told, I never gave snow mold a second thought. I didn’t even think of them as I researched and wrote that book. Moreover, my identification skills in this area are limited. Ours looks like the pictures of Typhus blight that I located on the internet.
If you are confused as to what I am writing about, — say you don’t have a lawn — check out some pictures of snow mold using Google or whatever search engine you happen to use. I am sure, though I didn’t check, that Wikipedia has some good pictures. This mold comes in differing shades of pink to white. If you have it on your lawn, however, you know about which I am writing.
I just leave our snow mold be. It disappears as the sun dries things out. Some folks actually run a rake though it, which causes it to disappear, though it is still infecting things.
The bad news is you can have an infection appear where you never saw it before. Yes, it is called an infection. It is, after all, a fungus. The good news is that in my almost 50-year career of taking care of lawns and writing about them, I have never seen a single lawn that has been killed by snow mold. Amazingly, virtually all damage caused has been on the lawn’s soil surface and did not kill the turf’s roots. A few weeks into the lawn season and you wouldn’t know you had a problem with mold.
Amazingly, no matter how damp and rainy a summer season we have, the mold never returns. I guess I should not complain. Say goodbye to any snow mold you have. The geese will be here the week this column appears. Spring is here. Mold won’t be.
Article source: Snow mold is a regular but harmless feature of lawns in springtime – Anchorage Daily News