This mold is normally dark brown or black in color. It can look slimy, sooty, or even like grayish white strands depending on the amount of moisture available and the length of time it has been growing.

It is important to remember that many other common indoor molds can look similar to stachybotrys (including cladosporium, aspergillus, alternaria, and drechslera), so testing is critical to conclusively identify stachybotrys in a building.

Stachybotrys mold needs the proper conditions in order to grow, including moisture, a nutrient source, temperature, and time. Standing water or a relative humidity of 90% or higher is necessary for stachybotrys to start germination and grow. However, once the stachybotrys begins to grow it can continue to propagate even if the surface water source dries up and the relative humidity falls to 70%. The nutrient sources that best support stachybotrys are those with a high cellulose content. As such, stachybotrys thrives on natural materials such as hay, straw, and wood chips, as well as building materials such as ceiling tile, drywall, paper vapor barriers, wallpaper, insulation backing, cardboard boxes, and paper files.

Stachybotrys survives a wide variation in temperature and grows most proficiently in temperatures that humans consider warm to moderately hot. It tends to develop more slowly than many other molds—one to two weeks after moisture intrusion as compared to one to two days for molds like aspergillus, penicillium, or cladosporium. Despite its slow start, stachybotrys usually develops into the dominant mold if the conditions are favorable, eventually crowding out other mold types that may have colonized the material first.

Like many other molds, stachybotrys can spread both through the generation of spores and the growth of root-like structures called mycelia. Stachybotrys spores grow in clusters at the end of stem-like structures known as hyphae. The spores do not easily disperse into the air if the colonized material is wet, as the spores are held together by a sticky/slimy coating. Distribution through the air is possible when the mold dries out or is disturbed.

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This page updated; Wednesday, February 07, 2007