The anthers of this plant were particularly heavily infected and rain had washed the purplish-brown spores of the fungus onto the petals.
When the anther smut infects its host it proliferates in the
stamens, producing tens of thousands of these microscopically small, spiny spores that are
then carried from flower to flower by pollinating insects, like the drone fly
that’s visiting the red campion flower below.
Hijacking the plant's
stamens and pollinators to produce and spread its spores around would be a
remarkable adaptation, but this fungus goes one step further in exploiting its
host.
Campion plants are either male or female and only males have the stamens
that the fungus needs for development of its spores, but when the fungal spores
infect a female campion - which would not normally produce stamens in which the
fungal spores proliferate - it induces the female plant to change sex and
become male, producing stamens where its spores can multiply.
The smut fungus symptoms are particularly conspicuous in
white campion Silene alba, where the petals are stained purple
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