A Simple and Practical Fumigation System by Barry Byers Chief Conservator, Provincial Archives of British Columbia Fungi are a major group of lower plants which lack chlorophyll. They include saprophytic molds, mushrooms and yeasts which live on dead organic material and parasitic forms which live on living plants and animals such as mildews and the athlete's foot fungus, to mention only a few. The group fungus is populated by nature's most adaptable and least demanding organisms. Its members can consume a wider variety of nutrients, remain viable longer in a dormant state in unfavorable conditions, multiply faster in good ones, travel with less effort, and mutate successfully faster than any other plant or creature. Fungi can live on virtually all organic materials and a number of synthetic ones.
Nobody knows how many varieties there are, but they definitely number in the many thousands.
Their spores are invisible to the naked eye and are, quite literally, everywhere. Fortunately, only a relative handful of species seem interested in a diet of paper or parchment. Fortunate, too, that the environmental conditions required for the growth of these fungi are easily avoidable in most of North America. Very generally speaking, in paper one variety first breaks down the sizing and filler materials and then a second variety takes over on the basic fibers. Although the mechanism of fungus attack on parchment is not thoroughly understood, there is no doubt that both parchment and leather are vulnerable to fungi.