In summer, after the ascospores shoot out of the ascospores, they produce germ tubes (or germ tubes from conidia), which penetrate into the host larvae and grow. The infected larvae burrow into the soil and form sclerotia in winter, which destroys the internal organs of the larvae, but the horny skin of the larvae is still intact. The next summer, a daughter is born from the front end of the larva's body. ?
Formation process
Every summer, on the plateau meadow above 3000 m above sea level, adult bat moths with small bodies and flowers will lay tens of thousands of eggs in Qian Qian on the ground. After about one month's incubation, the moth eggs will become worms, and then they will drill into moist and loose soil and suck the nutrition of plant roots, gradually raising their bodies to be white and fat.
There is a spherical cordyceps fungus ascospore in the soil layer. When the caterpillar moth larvae are attacked by spores, they drill into the shallow layer of the ground. The spores grow in the larvae, and the internal organs of the larvae disappear little by little. Finally, the larvae die head-on and tail-down. At this time, the insect body becomes a body full of hyphae and is buried in the soil layer. This is the "winter worm".
After a winter, in the spring and summer of the following year, hyphae began to grow again. From the mouth or head of the dead larva, a purple grass grew, 2-5 cm high, with a pineapple-shaped capsule at the top, which was called "summer grass". In this way, the larval body and the growing grass together form a complete "Cordyceps sinensis".