The bark sloughs off older cankers, exposing the wood beneath, or disintegrates, exposing longitudinal bast fibers, which give cankers a characteristic fiddle-string appearance. Anthracnose cankers rarely enlarge after the first year. Bull's eye rot is a postharvest disease that is usually observed when infected fruit are removed from storage. The disease gets its name from the lesions that frequently are comprised of concentric rings of necrotic tissue. Cream colored tufts of spores are sometimes present.
Infection occurs in the orchard around petal fall or just before harvest.
The fungus survives as mycelium and conidia in branch cankers. May. Acervuli first appear during late summer and fall about a year after infection. The cankers do not expand after the first year, but the anthracnose fungus can sporulate on the dead bark for several years. Sporulation occurs during cool, moist weather. Conidia are exuded in a gelatinous matrix and splashed to wound cites by rain.