All that snow that folks have been getting up north? It's been buckets of rain down here. Now if it would just warm up a bit, we could have some spring mushrooms popping up. Hopefully toward the end of this month we'll see some (fingers crossed).
In the meanwhile, some mushroom news. In Iceland, a mushroom book has won the 2010 Icelandic Literary Award. "Sveppabokin" or "The Mushroom Book" has become the fifth natural history book to win the prize.
In other news, fungus-based plastics could be a new green technology to be used in cars. This article is vague, and talks about mushroom roots, whatever those are. My guess is that the researcher used the term to dumb it down a bit for either the reporter of the general public, and was referring to mycelium. This writer from the UK seems to cater to a bit more intellectually mature audience.
Unfortunately, the White Nose Fungus has been found in southeastern Indiana, in spite of the closure of public caves to the public. I'm heading up to some north Alabama caves in early March, and I'll be sure to ask about the prognosis up there. In other invasive animal pathogen news, chytridiomycosis (which affects frogs) has also been found in Nantucket. The article quite WRONGLY refers to it as a "deadly virus".
Sigh, so it goes. That's enough for now, I think.
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