The Alabamycologist

Plug for Forever Wild

2012-01-08T23:44:00.000-06:00

As a person who spends a lot of time outdoors, I think it necessary to put in a good word for the Forever Wild Program here in Alabama. From what I've been told, the program acquires land using monies collected from state oil and gas leases (not taxes), which are then managed by the state for the use of all Alabamians, including hunters and fisherman as well as birdwatchers, tree huggers, and fungal foragers like myself.

Mushroom, my book review

2011-12-31T15:45:00.003-06:00

Santa was kind, and read my Amazon wish list, and brought me a shiny new copy of Nicholas Money's new book Mushroom. Now, I have a shelf full of books about mushrooms, and another shelf or two about other fungi that don't produce mushrooms, so I wasn't sure what to do once I had the thing in my hand. A couple of points in the interest of full disclosure: 1. I haven't read all of my mycology books thoroughly, there just aren't enough hours in the day and there is lots of redundant information, so I don't feel like a bad person (or Persoon?) for this. And 2., I haven't read Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard, also by Dr. Money, nor either of his other books, though I feel as though I should now, since I enjoyed Mushroom so thoroughly.

Yes, having the book in my hand, and having some time between semesters, I did what a scholar should do when not teaching or out in the field (looking for fungi) or in the lab; I read the book. And what a joy it was! In spite of my beef with other reviews of the book which had nothing at all to do with the book itself, I found it to be a good read on many levels (namely three).

It's educational. Even to a trained mycologist such as myself, I found much that I did not previously know within its pages. He incorporates modern research as well as historical details about mushrooms and their academic acolytes. That said, the writing, I think, isn't restricted to an audience of mycologists, but is accessible to a lay audience (though perhaps one that at least passed a course in biology). As evidence of this, a friend who is an academic though not a scientist picked up the pick and started reading delightedly.

It's funny. And no, he doesn't resort to cheap laughs so much as humorous imagery to illustrate points (such as Angelina Jolie flying through the air into a... not going to spoil the ending). The hackneyed "fun-guy" reference is avoided, mercifully. Most mycologists I've met have had a healthy sense of humor, and Dr. Money is no exception.

His views on the public perception of mycology succinctly defined and girded my own. Mushrooms and other fungi have generally had two strikes against them in the eyes of the laity. 1. They are bad, agents of sickness, decay and disease, and 2. Mushrooms are strange and magical, a window to the supernatural realm.
As to the first point. There is a common perception that mushrooms will kill you dead as soon as look at you. True enough SOME mushrooms contain toxins that will either kill you or make you wish they had killed you, but the generalization of mushrooms being bad and poisonous has been exaggerated. If you went out in the woods collecting mushrooms, and tried to eat all of them, it would be an act as indiscrete as saying you wanted to go hunting mammals in the woods with your bare hands. Maybe you'd find a squirrel, but maybe you'd find a porcupine, or a mountain lion. The potential results are the same. Maybe you find a meal, but maybe the quarry would hurt or kill you instead.

As to the second point. (2. Mushrooms are strange and magical, a window to the supernatural realm)
Mushrooms and the fungi that produce them do have value ecologically, as well as having potential application to problems of humanity (both in the sense of those problems we cause and the problems we face in our quest for survival). However we should approach these solutions with a scientific mind, not by suggesting the fungi have a source of magic that we can tap if we all just wish hard enough.

For both of these points, the real problem is ignorance, and the real solution is a scientific approach.

In summary, if you have an interest in mushrooms (which well you might if you are reading this), then you will likely enjoy this book. It won't tell you how to identify mushrooms (here you will need to fill your own bookshelf with other works), but it will hopefully explain why you should try.

Fungal news

2011-12-22T09:31:00.001-06:00

I've been meaning to post a bunch of pictures of things I've been finding around my home, like those two Amanitas. We had a week of moist and warmish conditions that allowed lots of mushrooms to come up. But I've also been keeping half an eye on the fungal news.

In research news, an article just came out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showing that the spicy heat of chili peppers is related to the moisture of the home range. Why? because the more moist the area, the greater the risk of infection by fungal pathogens, and the greater need for protective secondary compounds like capsaicinoids. Here's a pop-sci wrap up of the research, which talks about the seed pathogen, a species of Fusarium, as 'the Fusarium fungus'. There are many species of Fusarium, and they are a notoriously difficult genus to work with taxonomically.

Another article touts another medical benefit of mushrooms. A diet high in selenium and nickel has been linked to a decrease in risk of pancreatic cancer, so a mushroom omelette is indicated by this newspaper, eggs being rich in selenium, mushrooms in nickel. Bonus: reference to the original article in the medical journal, Gut.

...and Amanita muscaria

2011-12-12T14:09:00.001-06:00

Found a nice patch of these just a mile from my home here in Auburn, right near a stand of loblolly pines. It's an amazing trove of sporocarps in all stages, from the just emergent buttons to large individuals with planar pilei and the warts on the caps washed off. These are your poster children for the mushroom. If you see a mushroom represented in the media, it's usually one of these guys. From the home of the Smurfs to Mario Bros and on and on and on.

I went out looking just in the neighborhood with one of my friends, and we can upon scads of things. More to follow...

Amanita citrina!

2011-12-06T11:33:00.003-06:00

I came across this mushroom while I was depositing a check at my credit union. The willow oak in the background is in an island of asphalt, and is most likely the host for this ectomycorrhizal species. It had been warm and rainy over the previous couple of days, and I was getting mushroom vision: seeing mushrooms everywhere whether they were there or not. I had a lot of work to do to finish out the term, getting final exams ready, etc, but I knew that the mushrooms were coming up and the freeze was coming too. Fortunately I happened upon this fellow. It looked very Amanita-y from the top, warty veil remnants on the cap, brilliant white stipe, and with a little digging, you can see the volva at the base. The cap had a pale yellowish green cast to it. Weber and Smith helped get this very quickly to Amanita citrina. The volva sure enough looked like a sliced loaf of bread, and the cap smells like raw potatoes, and I got a nice white spore print from it.

Damn you, faint praise!

2011-11-29T16:51:00.030-06:00

I received this in my news alerts. And now I know what I'd like Santa to put under the tree for me. It's certainly not the review, but the item being reviewed.

Frankly, I take offense at some of Scicurious' comments. And I will tell you that I am refraining from expressing many of my true sentiments. My hope is that she someday learns that her fellow scientists share her passion for their own subject, and that most of us have the courtesy not to malign the research interests of other scientists.

Speaking of respect for scientists working in different areas, I recently got sucked into History's documentary series, "How The Earth Was Made". It brought back a lot of memories of my foray into geology, which mainly involved a textbook and some spare time back when I had some. I highly recommend it, and it made me think about some interesting directions for my own research. Details to come, perhaps?

Fungi music!

2011-11-25T21:48:00.000-06:00

This popped up in my news alerts. In the British Virgin Islands, they have a musical genre called Fungi music. There is also a dish called fungi, but neither the music nor the dish seem to have anything to do with the subject that I prefer to blog about. It's pretty sweet though, as this YouTube clip demonstrates!

New era in mycoblogging for me

2011-11-25T12:33:00.003-06:00

Wow. So with the new iPhone I can talk and it will write down what I am saying to put on my blog. That is super cool but can I say fungal terms like coronaria send (NB. Cortinarius) basidiospore and have it understand? Okay, not quite. Quarts in the area's courts in areas CEO RTI and ARI US. How about amanita? (Doesn't capitalize) How about Armillaria? Hi pozzolana (Hypoxylon) crepitus (Crepidotus) try Caloma (Tricholoma) them out Aloma (Naematoloma) Agaricus boletus from a Topsys (Fomitopsis). Oh okay not perfect but still a pretty funny thing. (And it doesn't punctuate very well, either. Parenthetical remarks are my edits)

Very neat old tymie video of the life cycle of a mushroom!

2011-11-12T12:01:00.000-06:00

Spectacular Science: The Lifecycle of a Mushroom from Thomas Beg on Vimeo.

What was the rust?

2011-11-11T08:36:00.000-06:00

After posting yesterday, I was thinking about the great Alaskan orange goo story, and I tried to see if anyone has followed up. Nope. I was unable to find an answer as to what rust fungus produced that great cloud of orange that had Kivalina residents so concerned. It is often a simultaneous joy and sorrow to find the holes in the Internet.

Long time no posts!

2011-11-10T11:24:00.000-06:00

I now see that my last post was on August 8th? Crikey! It's been a while. Not that I haven't been out and about looking for mushrooms and other fungal pursuits, I've just been busy busy busy. I'm teaching a Principles of Biology course and it's taking a lot of my time. I try to use a few fungal examples every now and again, but for these folks fungi are just something that you put on pizza or perhaps something that spurs you to throw your bread away.

I've been adding a few things to my bookshelf as well, including Bessette et al.'s North American Boletes, and the How To Identify Mushrooms series. But to be honest, I haven't been able to look at them much yet. Also, I got my compound microscope fixed up, so I'm able to look at some fungi on the scale at which they typically operate (remember, fungi are fundamentally microorganisms!). Hopefully, I'll be able to put some of my photomicrographs up soon enough. Okay, back to the lecture writing. Holler at ya, later, Blogosphere.

Strange news

2011-08-18T20:24:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook; an article about some orange goo washing up on a beach in Alaska. At first they thought it might have been microscopic eggs of things. Now they are saying that it's actually spores of a rust fungus. Rusts are notoriously difficult fungi to work with because, for one thing, they have up to five different spore stages, and another, they are biotrophic, meaning they require a living host to survive and reproduce. So if you don't have a living plant host, identification is especially difficult. This is indeed some very strange news!

Update: 8/19/11. Looks like I beat MSN to the punch! They're running the story on their front page today, though with few details. Believe me, I'll tell you what this thing turns out to be when I find out. If I may stand on my soapbox for one small minute, this is an excellent example of why scientific illiteracy is a significant problem in our world.

The Fastest Living Thing in the World

2011-08-15T08:42:00.000-05:00

Once again, fungi are collecting superlatives. I had to check to make sure it's still considered a zygomycete (it is) but Pilobolus (not to be confused with the dance company) is reported to be the fastest living thing in the world.

Zora Neale Hurston, author, secret Alabamian, zombie hunter; PvZ

2011-07-26T10:57:00.000-05:00

I apologize for the hiatus. Actually, there have been lots of mushrooms coming up gangbusters all over, with the passing rainstorms we've been getting, and I've been meaning to post pictures and comments. So what shook me out of my quiescent period? It was this YouTube video I stumbled upon, an interview with the author Zora Neale Hurston about her experiences with zombies (yes, real zombies from Haiti). Though she claimed to be from Florida, Ms. Hurston was actually from just down the road in Notasulga, Alabama.

On rather tangentially related topic, I've become quite enamored of the video game Plants vs. Zombies, which features both zombies (not the real but the fictionalized type) and mushrooms! I know I'm rather late to the party with this. The designers are quite creative in ascribing zombie-killing powers to an array of plants and mushrooms. In the iPhone version, you can cultivate a Zen garden, including a special section just for your mushrooms. And it's got a catchy theme song you can hear when you defeat the game.

Life imitates art (?)

2011-06-21T13:23:00.002-05:00

Mycologists love to put the fun in fungi. Dr. Dennis Desjardin is definitely up there in my book of the funniest mycologists I've never met. He named a species of Phallus after a colleague (noting "with permission" in the manuscript), and now, he's added another species description to his credit, which he's named after Spongebob Squarepants, Spongiforma squarepantsii. Desjardin participated in the description of the genus in a previous paper, which indicates just strange this group is. At first glance, even the expert mycologists could not tell if the specimens were ascomycetes or basidiomycetes! Closer inspection by microscopy and even closer via DNA sequence analysis revealed Spongiforma to be basidiomycetes, actually gasteroid (truffle-like) boletes. The basidiocarps are sponge-like in appearance, and the authors thought the photomicrographs resembled Bikini Bottom, thus the new species was named for the world's most famous marine fry-cook.

So far, the group has only been found in southeastern Asia and the adjacent super-archipelago. S. squarepantsii was found in a dipterocarp forest on the island of Borneo.

Spore print technique

2011-06-20T08:53:00.001-05:00

I recently invested in one of Taylor Lockwood's DVDs on mushroom identification. One reason was to address the lack of nature documentaries on fungi being used in the class I taught last term. In the video, he suggests collecting spore prints in a different way. Instead of using contrasting black and white pattern (as I have done), he suggests using aluminum foil. I tried it out with these two sporocarps I collected yesterday, and both great to me, though the spore print on this mushroom is pretty unambiguously dark brown. I can see a couple of advantages to the aluminum foil technique. For one, the spores don't adhere to the paper fibers, meaning it's easier to scrape the surface to make a slide of spores. I can see where it may be helpful in determining spore color in some ambiguous cases as well, and it would be easier to mold a piece of aluminum foil around a mushroom in the field than a piece of paper. Both formats are easily recycled, so it's a draw on that point.

In other news, I found a nice fairy ring on campus that sprang up after the rainstorms we've had recently. We've been in severe water deficit here, and need the rain very badly. So it was nice to see that it was at least enough for this group of mushrooms. I collected a couple, just to test the foil method, and to see if they were not Chlorophyllum molybdites, which is what I've seen most frequently around here in fairy rings. You can see from the photo above that the spore print is most definitely not green but chocolate brown. Thus, those are more likely a species of Agaricus (which one? I need to delve a bit deeper!)

Happy Birthday to a prominent Alabamian?

2011-05-22T14:41:00.000-05:00

Today would have been the 97th Birthday of jazz artist Sun Ra, who first appeared on Earth in Birmingham,AL on this day in 1914 with the name of Herman Poole Blount. After an experience where he claimed a passage to the planet Saturn, he later legally changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra, and lived in the persona of an intergalactic traveller.

Sun Ra was a pioneering musician even within the highly creative medium of jazz. His song titles and lyrics often feature clever word play and focus on the themes of space travel, the empowerment of African Americans, and Egyptology. His band, the Arkestra,continues to play today, and contains the forward and reverse of his adopted surname (RA), as well as supporting the idea that his intergalactic travels were like those on a great Ark such as Noah's, or that the entire Earth exists as just such an Ark.

Cryptomycota! The new, new thing

2011-05-12T08:31:00.000-05:00

The mycologists I've worked with, in contrast with many of the botanists I've worked with, tend to be more comfortable saying "I don't know" if they can't identify a specimen of their chosen taxonomic interest. It is a necessity, as we like to believe that most of our plant species (at least in the temperate regions) have been described, while we admit that alpha-taxonomy of fungi is far behind. Fungi are essentially microorganisms, with reduced morphology (fewer distinguishing characteristics), and we often rely on what we can culture, which is a small proportion of the total diversity, as DNA techniques demonstrate.

Thus, I am surprised and not surprised to learn of a new lineage of fungi, just published in the current issue of Nature. I am not surprised that it has been found, but I am surprised at the proposed diversity of this new lineage, which the authors claim may approach half of the total diversity of kingdom Fungi. This new lineage appears to ally with basal lineages of fungi, (e.g. the chytrid genus, Rozella), and members have been found in an amazing diversity of habitats, from marine sediments, to eutrophied freshwater, treated drinking water, and soil around the roots (rhizosphere) of corn and aspen.

These fungi appear to be capable of producing a flagellum, like the chytrids (but lost in the other lineages of fungi), and don't have a chitinous cell wall, but they do appear to have assimilative feeding, like good and true fungi do.

This is a watershed event for mycology, folks.

Get rich quick hunting mushrooms!

2011-05-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

TRUE STORY: A Springfield, OH woman won $100,000 in a raffle, and found out just as she was about to go out hunting for morels. Upon calming down from the excitement, she did get out on her foray, although the article stops short of telling if she found any.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

2011-05-05T18:36:00.000-05:00

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I thought I'd share one of my favorite words to say, "HUITLACOCHE"! (Wheedle-la-CO-chay). Try saying it. Try not enjoying it. What can I say, it's one of the most spirited words I know that pertains to the fungal kingdom.

What is it? We do have it here in the US, including Alabama, and it's actually a fungal sign of disease on ears of corn. It's caused by Ustilago maydis, which is a smut fungus. Smuts are basidiomycetes, which makes them close kin to rusts, mushrooms, polypores, jellies, and sundry others. Close is a relative term, here. This article says it's in the mushroom family. No, it's in the mushroom Division, if you want to split hairs, which I clearly do. But the recipe looks tasty! In here they suggest that the name is from the Aztec language of Nahuatl, meaning "raven poop". You can even buy it in a can. OK, that's soup, but I know you can get the straight stuff in a can as well.

I did try eating it once, and it is not what I'd call a good experience. I was working on a farm and would occasionally sample some of the corn fresh off the stalk, in the field, raw. A little bit is okay, and very sweet. Anyway, I found a smutted ear and tried a little taste. It was rather grainy. The smut I tried was black, which is apparently better if you cook it, while the white stuff is better raw.

New book for me to peruse/ Other fungal news

2011-05-03T14:25:00.000-05:00

A new book on one of my favorite subjects has just come out. I've just ordered it, even though I have a shelf full of mushroom and fungus books. While the old saw tells us we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, it does appear to have a very nice cover, and being written by a pair of old hands from the British Mycological Society, I have high expectations.

In other fungal news, fungi appear to be on the move again. I got this through my news-alerts and attempted to chase the rabbit down the hole to the original source, only to find my library doesn't subscribe (frown). However, the article suggests that truffles have been found in an area in previously not known to have them, north of the Alps. They hypothesize the cause is climate change. Click on that link if you want to see a cute dog with a gigantic truffle.

I also learn in this article of the existence of a breed of dogs known for their ability to hunt truffles: the Lagotto Romagnolo. At $2500+, I don't think I'll be getting one any time soon, though there is a club (actually two clubs) for their people here in the US.

While Australians may have been salivating at the thought of a bumper crop of pistachios, Colletotrichum acutatum seems to have gotten to them first, unfortunately. This fungus, which causes an anthracnose, affects a broad range of plant hosts, including Pistacia vera (Anacardiaceae). The article goes on to suggest that this isn't the only fungal disease outbreak occurring in Australia this year. Blame it on the rain.

"Worm-grass" is neither worm nor grass, but as you can guess from its mention here, is a fungus. In this article, about Cordyceps spp.(though it is not mentioned by name), it is suggested that harvesting of this fungus may be threatening the delicate ecology of the Tibetan Plateau.

And finally in this installment of the Fungal News, another item that I have WANT for, a Super Mario Mushroom lamp. While the article claims it is a 1UP lamp, it appears to come in PowerUp as well.

I'm okay, lots of other Alabamians are not.

2011-05-03T09:16:00.001-05:00

While I tend to focus more on fungi than the state where I live and blog, we've just faced a terrible tragedy here in Alabama. Myself and the area immediately around me were spared, but there are many people in Alabama who were not so fortunate. Please consider those impacted by the tornadoes, and give whatever you can to help.

Thank you.

WOW! Cool fungus-orchid news

2011-04-20T19:35:00.001-05:00

In my inbox, I found an article from PNAS via Discover's blog. I've currently having a bit of a nergasm, this is so cool. I've recently started collecting orchids, which are about as strange as fungi (and intimately associated with fungi, by the way), so this really caught my eye. A rare orchid's leaves look like they're infected with a fungus, both macroscopically and microscopically, attracting flat-footed flies to pollinate them. The flies are attracted to sick and rotting vegetation feeding on the spores, so the orchid has evolved to look just like an infected plant, even when healthy. The flies visit, pick up pollen, and move on to the next orchid, effectively transferring pollen. The orchid's leaf hairs even look like spores of a fungus, and the scent produced by the flower is similar to that of the fungus, further developing the ruse.

Part of me thinks this may be an April Fool's Day joke, though that would be highly irregular for a journal such as PNAS. Orchids are notorious for their ability to mimic other organism's for the purpose of achieving cross-pollination, here's a video of some bee-mimic orchids.

Old Fisheries Pond

2011-04-13T11:18:00.001-05:00

I went out after a wet weekend to see if anything had come up. I did find a few things, like this lovely little Scutellinia scutellata, the eyelash fungus. This cute little asco is not in Bessette et al. or Weber and Smith, for some odd reason. But it's here, for sure.


Scutellinia scutellata, Pyronemataceae, Pezizales, Ascomycota

It seems as though Monday has been giant storm day over the past few weeks, with storms rolling in overnight and taking down trees. All the moisture has had the cedar apple rust going gangbusters as well.

Telial horns out the wazoo! I did get a peak under a compound scope and saw the two-celled teliospores, which look like two cones facing each other. I didn't see any basidia or basidiospores that I could discern, though. I'll take another look later today.

Mobile Leprechaun Remix

2011-03-17T08:36:00.000-05:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day, y'all!

Looky here!

2011-03-16T13:59:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow is, of course, Saint Patrick's Day, and while I don't have any Irish blood that I know of, I do like to look twice at clover patches for items such as those seen in the picture above. I know it's not related to fungi at all, unless I start blathering on about the various fungi you might find on clovers, and there are a lot. A search just for rusts on genus Trifolium yields about 1200 records in the SMML Fungus-Host Distribution Database. Anyway, perhaps it's because I spend quite a bit of time looking down at the ground for fungi that I also like to look at clovers. Observe that there are at least 2 four-leaf clovers in this picture. Where are they, you may ask? Do you think I'd tell?

Busy busy busy

2011-03-10T16:28:00.001-06:00

A nice little Pluteus cervinus on an old rotten log

It's been raining, so I've been out hunting mushrooms. As I mentioned previously, I went out on the Tuskegee National Forest with some of my students, out on the Bartram Trail (or Bertram Trail, if you believe the sign, which you shouldn't). That was a couple of weeks ago, now, and already I've been at it again. Last week I gave a talk to my new friends in the East Alabama Orchid Society about mycorrhizal fungi and orchids (a very cool story I'll elaborate on later, I promise). Earlier this week I gave a talk to my daughter's kindergarten class about mushrooms, and this morning I went out to the Alabama Nature Center in Millbrook, AL to talk to some of their nature educators about identifying mushrooms and other macrofungi. They do have a beautiful site out there, so I'll be sure to head back, and I suggest you do too. After me flapping my lips for close to two hours, we got to go looking for some mushrooms. Even though it had only rained yesterday (and some last week) we saw some neat stuff out there: Cortinarius (pictured, species? not sure I even want to go there), Hygrocybe chlorophana (I called it Hygrophorus, which it used to be, same family, still a waxy cap, nice yellow thing) Hypholoma fasciculare (sulfur tuft, formerly known as Naematoloma), and lots of polypores and what-not. It looks like we're getting more rain, which is good news! And to top it off, I just got a copy of Taylor Lockwood's Mushroom Identification Trilogy in the mail. I'll let you know what I think of it by and by. Good times!

Cortinarius sp., with fresh cortina!

10,000!

2011-03-04T11:09:00.000-06:00

A modest milestone finally met
For mushrooms on the internet
Thanks to all y'all who visit
To read of a Kingdom, exquisite
Passing through, or for many a year
Y'all come back, now, y'hear?

George Washington Carver Museum

2011-02-25T12:15:00.000-06:00


Bust of George Washington Carver outside the museum

Yesterday my daughter's second grade class went on a field trip to the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site just a bit down the road from here. Even though I had a field trip of my own to contend with in the afternoon (keep posted, details after the second trip today), I had to go for at least part of the trip, as George Washington Carver is a hero of mine.

Peephole into pictures of mushroom!

I was pleasantly surprised to find a lovely display of mushrooms and other fungi displayed prominently near the entrance. Fungi were one of Dr. Carver's many interests, and his Master's of Agriculture from what is now Iowa State University was in Plant Pathology.

Another peephole

Ascomycetes

I especially appreciate that the macrofungi were separated into their proper divisions,

Basidiomycetes

And I also liked this illustration of a powdery mildew cleistothecium. As well as being a botanist, agricultural chemist, philanthropist (within his means), and inventor, he was also something of an artist.

One of Dr. Carver's illustrations of a powdery mildew ascoma.

I didn't remember the fungal display from my last visit, which was many years ago, but it just reinforced my fondness for this great man.

Despicable

2011-02-16T22:07:00.000-06:00

It's hard to imagine another word for it right now.

For Valentine's Day, poetry

2011-02-14T13:42:00.002-06:00

Not so long ago, I mentioned my blog to a friend who is in the humanities. She noted that Sylvia Plath wrote a poem called "Mushrooms" (1959), which I would share here, but it is easy enough for you to click the link and read it for yourself without me risking copyright violation. I have seen where some have interpreted this poem as a metaphor for feminism, and I can see that being an underlying theme. I, being admittedly male, don't believe I can speak to this interpretation of the poem. As a mycologist, however, I appreciate the tone of the poem, especially when juxtaposed with another mushroom-themed poem

Let us consider the work of another great American poet, Emily Dickinson. She too penned a poem about basidiocarps, posthumously titled "The Mushroom is the elf of plants" (published in 1924 many years after her death in 1886). You'll not be surprised to hear that I do not like this poem so well. Though Ms. Dickinson was a student of botany, she much maligns the fungi. I am stung by the final lines "Had nature any outcast face, Could she a son contemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom, -it is him". To be fair, this was the prevailing attitude of the 19th century. For one, mushrooms and other fungi were considered to be plants, and it was also thought that their only role in nature was as agents of disease and decay. What a difference the better part of a century makes!

I feel as though Plath must have been intending to author a revised view of Dickinson. Both poems are relatively short works; five stanzas of four lines for Dickinson, eleven stanzas of three lines for Plath. In Dickinson's poem, the protagonist is addressed it the third person. Dickinson refers to a single male mushroom. "That mushroom, it is him". As if referring to the mushroom as nature's Iscariot wasn't enough of a display of enmity, this poetic relationship only reinforces her disdain. Plath, by contrast, refers to mushrooms in the first person plural ("We shall by morning/Inherit the earth/Our foot's in the door"). I especially admire the phrase 'our foot', suggesting many individuals sharing a single member. To me, it symbolizes simultaneous unity and multitude, another fungal oddity.

I apologize to any devotees of the humanities who may feel that I am blindly making a foray into comparative literature and sounding like a novice at best. I am the first to admit that I am not a poet nor an experienced literary critic. As a mycologist, though, I definitely prefer Plath's sympathetic treatment of fungi to Dickinson's unsympathetic treatment.

Ironically, on the cover of this book of Dickinson's poems is a flower that appears to me to be Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), which is an achlorophyllous plant that is absolutely dependent upon fungi for its nutrition. Monotropoid plants take mycorrhizas to the next level, in that they don't provide the fungus with, well, as far as we currently know, anything. They somehow "convince" the fungi to provision them with photosynthate (sugar) from other plants, as well as other nutrients.

Follow up: 2/15/11. I just found this anthology of mushroom-inspired poems entitled "Decomposition". Clever title, that. I just hope it's better than this album of mushroom-inspired songs. I haven't actually listened to the whole album, to be fair, but the style is not my cup of tea. Perhaps, as Mark Twain said about Wagner's music, it's better than it sounds.

Kingdom for a day

2011-02-10T13:50:00.001-06:00

I received command of the lectern yesterday, to present the Organism of the Day (Exidia recisa, pictured above) and to lecture on the biology of my favorite Kingdom, the Fungi. It was certainly a fevered race to present information about five phyla in about 40 minutes (minus the spiel on E. recisa). In the earlier section, I did manage to get time at the end to discuss two grades of fungi (grades being groups that are share similarity but not by recent common ancestry, e.g. winged things), the lichens and the imperfect fungi. The latter section was much more hurried, and I think many student hands were strained by furious notetaking, and my own vocal cords by the shear tumult of words such as ascocarp and basidiospore and dikaryon. While I loved the opportunity to share information about the Fifth Kingdom, it would have been nice to slow down and languish on the finer details. The students have an exam tomorrow, and in order to keep up with our semester-long march through life's rich tapestry, we needed to soldier on.

The latest in the fungal news...

2011-02-06T12:00:00.000-06:00

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.

Site Redesign

2011-01-31T13:50:00.010-06:00

Yes, I've been quite active in the blogosphere recently, and have just redesigned this site. Prominently featured are: a new background featuring some nice LBMs I found here in a lawn, and a new masthead featuring an anomalous mushroom, Phylloporus rhodoxanthus, the gilled bolete. Boletes typically have tubes, but the trait of having a lamellate hymenium (a.k.a. gills) is polyphyletic, which means that not all things with the trait have it by common descent. A familiar animal example of this would be wings, a character shared by birds, bats, and insects; the three groups are only distantly related, with lots of unwinged taxa in between.

Gills are found in the traditional Agaricoid fungi (with some losses of gills), and in many (but not all) Russuloid fungi (which look like agarics to most folks). Gills are also found in some polypores, like Lenzites and Daedalea (the latter really being an in-betweener), as well as the split gill fungus, Schizophyllum commune (below). Interestingly, none of the Ascomycota have gills.

Back to P. rhodoxanthus, you can see in the picture that the gills are a bit different, in that they have little stubs, like they want to fork or form tubes, but then they don't. Paxillus spp., also in the order Boletales, tend to have forked gills too.

Anyway, I hope you, dear reader, appreciate the new look. Hopefully I'll keep posting new stuff with some frequency. We've been getting a lot of rain here, so perhaps if it warms up a bit I'll be posting some of my discoveries along the way.

Just found this site via...

2011-01-30T14:09:00.007-06:00

Mycorant. In the class that I'm currently teaching, Organismal Biology, one of the assignments that students are engaged in is the watching of nature videos and reporting on them. In nature videos, there is a strong bias towards 1. Mammals, and 2. Animals in general. There are a handful of good plant videos, but the number of good fungi videos I've seen is scant, to be judicious.

However, thanks to Mycorant, I've found Fungal Visions, a blog that has some nice videos of fungal biology. One of the first ones I watched, showing the divisions of the Fungi, is quite dated, though. So, perhaps if I get another lifetime, I'll dedicate myself to making films about fungi. I doubt that's going to happen, though.

Organism of the Day: Armillaria mellea

2011-01-27T15:38:00.009-06:00

Yesterday I presented the Organism of the Day to my Biology class, and selected one of my favorites, Armillaria mellea. First, the complete classification.

Armillaria mellea (Vahl.:Fr.) Kummer (common names include: oak root fungus, honey mushroom)

Armillaria

Physalacriaceae (it was Tricholomataceae when I first learned it, but we all knew Tricholomataceae was a dumping ground for white-spored mushrooms)

Agaricales

Agaricomycetes

Basidiomycota

Fungi

Eukarya

Why should you care about A. mellea? Well, first it's an important plant pathogen, infecting hundreds of plant species, though mostly noticeable on woody species. Even though it's called oak root fungus, this is clearly a misnomer. It can also survive on dead plant material, as a saprobe.

It does produce mushrooms, being an agaric, but these are analogous to the apples on the tree, they are just a way of getting around. The mushrooms are fairly typical, with a pileus, a stipe, and a partial veil. Like most common mushrooms, the fertile part or hymenium takes the form of gills, or lamellae. The spores produced rain down and you can see deposits of them on the caps of some of the other mushrooms. Notice that it’s white, the color is an important diagnostic feature as well.It also produces structures called mycelial fans, under the bark of trees that it’s infecting, which is an important structure for feeding the organism.

But another interesting feature is the bioluminescence. This is present in many species of mushrooms (at least 70 species) and other organisms, many animals. The glow of Armillaria mellea has been observed since ancient times, and has the common name foxfire. There’s a town called Foxfire in North Carolina, and Mark Twain in mentions the boys using it in Huckleberry Finn. In some fungi, the mushrooms glow, but in Armillaria, it’s the mycelium and rhizomorphs.

Perhaps the neatest thing about Armillaria is this item. In 1992 it was reported that a single clone of Armillaria gallica was estimated to cover an area of 15 hectares (or about 37 acres), weigh over 10,000 kg (about as much as a blue whale), and be over 1500 years old. And you would have never known it, because it was underground and under bark, and much of it was made up of microscopic threads.

The researchs who discovered the humongous fungus baited for the fungus using poplar sticks, buried under ground, and tested for somatic incompatibility. Basically, if the fungal isolates were genetically distinct, they would repel each other. If they fused, the isolates recognized each other part of the same whole. Comparison of genes further demonstrated that it’s all one big thing. The folks in Michigan are proud of their humongous fungus and celebrate it every year.

But the story doesn’t end there. Later that year, another humungous fungus was claimed near Glenwood, Washington, that was supposed to be 600 hectares, 40 times bigger than the one in the upper peninsula. Though the evidence wasn’t as strong, the question arose. How big can these things get?

In 2003, a paper was published demonstrating an even larger Armillaria clone, in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon. This one was found to be even bigger than the purported thallus of Glenwood, 965 hectares, or 2385 acres. Though the estimates of the age are variable, it's thought that the Oregon Armillaria clone (actually A. ostoyae) could be as old as 8650 years. Can you imagine? An individual organism that might predate the Egyptian pyramids?

Does this seem like deja vu? I just realized that I blogged about this before, and not too long ago. But not as a prestigious Organism of the Day. That part is new. I still think it's one of the coolest stories in mycology. I also think Tom Volk tells the story better, but there it is.

Another fungi in Alabama story

2011-01-14T14:39:00.002-06:00

While waiting for the white nose fungus to come flying in from the north, Alabama has been hit by another newsworthy fungus in the south. This one has been around for a while, but is approaching epidemic proportions in the marshes near Mobile and adjacent Mississippi. Claviceps purpurea, which is better known as ergot, affects many grasses, and was the original source of lysergic acid, a precursor of LSD. Now it is hitting Spartina alternifolia, one of the two main grass species in the area.

The fungus doesn't kill the plants though it does render them sterile, which in an evolutionary context is just as bad. Many questions remain unanswered. For example, was the Gulf oil spill an important predisposing factor? Also, is it from the G3 group, considered a different variety of the fungus, which seems to affect Spartina more frequently than other grasses? Probably so, which would be good seeing as the G1 and G2 groups affect some of our economically important grasses. Clearly, this story is developing, and it is far to early to consider what the impact is or may become.

Bear eating fly agaric

2011-01-08T14:16:00.002-06:00

Came across this video depicting a bear cub eating fly agaric and having a little trip. I do not endorse the feeding of fly agaric to animals, but this is interesting and I haven't posted in a while, so there it is.

I am a mushroom...

2010-12-03T21:34:00.003-06:00

From: Je suis un champignon... / ALT-TAB.ORG
Here's a lovely little mushroom related humor. Perhaps I'm retrotranslating from the French, but the broccoli says "I'm a broccoli, I look like a tree", the nut is saying "I'm a nut, and I look like a brain", and the mushroom says "I'm a mushroom, and I hate this game".

Okazaki fragments

2010-11-12T08:37:00.003-06:00

Sorry I've been remiss in posting for a while. I've been busy with my new job, teaching biology. This post isn't about fungi or Alabama, but about what I perceive to be an injustice of sorts. The textbook I'm using makes a big deal about highlighting scientists and their famous experiments; Mendel, Darwin, Watson and Crick (and Rosalind Franklin, of course), Hershey and Chase, Meselson and Stahl, but they just mentioned Okazaki fragments, and glossed over the fact that they were named for the scientist (sic) who discovered them. Okazaki fragments are the short, punctuated stretches of DNA that are produced on the lagging strand when the molecule is being copied.

My curiosity piqued by this oversight, I decided to find out who Okazaki is or was. As it turns out, Okazaki is and was. The eponymous fragments were discovered by a husband and wife team, Reiji and Tsuneko Okazaki, in 1968. Reiji died from leukemia in 1975. He was a native of Hiroshima, and survived the immediate effects of the bombing that ended the Second World War. Tsuneko, as far as my research can tell, survives still, and is a prominent figure in the promotion of science in Japan.

They were able to discover the key to the mystery of the lagging strand by using a chased pulse technique, feeding E. coli irradiated nucleotides followed by non-irradiated nucleotides.

Sorry for using this space as a bully pulpit to vent my impotent rage and righteous indignation, but at least you know I still have plenty to say.

More Alabama fungus news!

2010-11-01T22:51:00.002-05:00

Probably my favorite Alabama brewery, Good People Brewing Company, has announced they are brewing a batch of IPA using a different type of yeast, Brettanomyces. This yeast (which I admit I'd never heard of before) is a bit different from good ol' Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in that it has been frequently construed as a contaminant, but is used in some instances for brewing as it produced different sensory compounds. We'll see how it turns out!

WANT!

2010-09-23T11:11:00.002-05:00

Here's an item I'd like to get, a Mario mushroom design iPhone cozy. You can also get them for your iPad!

Perils of the Interwebs, perilous collecting

2010-08-29T22:26:00.002-05:00

I do love the internet, obviously from my participation in it, but do find some faults in it occasionally. For one, as a mycologist, it is evident how much more there is to be explored and documented. Species list for Alabama mushrooms? Or anywhere else for that matter? This isn't solely the fault of the Internet, of course, as the direction of human curiosity and endeavor hasn't led to many attempts at species lists for macroscopic fungi such as it has for flora and fauna. And I am not up to the task myself, so I do accept some blame as well.

But I received a link to an article about a fungus that is expanding its range northward from Florida, to find that I can't tell what the thing is. It is described as "brown roy", which I do believe is a typo, and that the original intent was "brown rot". In looking up this fungus, I find that all the other news outlets picking up the story and posting it on their websites mirror this apparent error. The other name given, "Korean fungus", is also not helpful. The original article mention a photograph of the damage, but they don't SHOW the image.

What will this mean for Alabamians and their wood in service? Alas, I cannot say, for garbage in does equal garbage out, as the old computing axiom states.

In other mushroom news, fungi have been killing in an unexpected way in Italy. Not by nasty infection, not by inadvertent poisoning, not by taking advantage of the intoxicated, but by preying upon the cupidity of mushroom collectors. I would have been surprised to find Italians, with a long history of mycophagy, being killed by collecting and eating poisonous mushrooms, but this is not the case. Eighteen Italians have been killed by their secretive protection of fruiting sites, falling off trails down steep slopes or getting lost. I know many mycophiles have nearly gotten quite lost, staring at the ground instead of focusing on their position in the landscape, myself included.

Alabamians gone viral again

2010-08-23T13:18:00.003-05:00

This was in Huntsville!

While I feel for the poor lady who was the victim of the attack, her brother is quite charismatic, especially under the influence of Auto-tune.

The End of History

2010-07-28T12:07:00.011-05:00

This has been in the news quite a bit recently as an "odd story". The Brew Dog Brewery in Scotland has produced the strongest beer in the world, The End of History. At a whopping 55% alcohol by volume (ABV), I (and others) ask, how is that even possible?

Beer and wine are produced by fermenting their feedstocks, or incubating the ingredients with yeast, which consumes the sugars and converts them to ethanol under anaerobic conditions. Alcohol (specifically ethyl alcohol), is a poison which kills slowly, the old saw goes, though more quickly in the case of yeasts. Most beer yeasts max out at 5-7% ABV, with yeasts used in Belgian strains tolerating 12%. Even so, no yeast can survive and prosper at these higher proportions of alcohol. So the brewers engaged in what some brewing purists have claimed is foul play, freeze distillation. Because water has a higher freezing point than water (which is why the vodka in your freezer remains a liquid), if you freeze the beer and remove the ice crystals, the remaining liquid is enriched in alcohol and the other flavorants. In the case of End of History, that includes juniper berries and highland nettles.

Only 11 bottles have been produced, each within a taxidermied roadkill squirrel or stoat. The price tag is not a trivial matter. Depending on whether you want a stoat or a squirrel, the bottles were 500 or 700 pounds, though now they are sold out. BrewDog still has inventory of their other ultrahigh gravity beers, including Tactical Nuclear Penguin at 32% ABV and Sink The Bismarck, at 41% ABV. These ultrahigh gravity beers are still illegal in Alabama; the Gourmet Beer and Wine Law signed last year increased the accepted ABV content from 6% to only 13.9%. However, this has greatly expanded the inventory of my favorite local wine and beer merchant, Gus.

I don't usually weigh in on the football thang, but...

2010-07-16T11:54:00.004-05:00

Now, I follow SEC football, being an alumnus of Auburn University, but I prefer to leave football talk to the approximately 1 million other sports blogs out there, as a case of nonoverlapping magisteria. They don't talk about fungi, and I usually don't talk about football, even though it is an integral part of the Alabama experience. But I found this too funny to pass up. A video game store in Tuscaloosa replaced the cover photo of tough Tim Tebow with an image of his more sensitive side, crying after losing the SEC Championship to 'Bama.

The cause of Yunnan Sudden Death Syndrome revealed: mushrooms

2010-07-14T09:49:00.003-05:00

A friend of mine posted this article from the BBC concerning the lethal poisoning of over 400 Chinese people in Yunnan province. The Yunnan Sudden Death Syndrome had been observed for over 30 years, and the cause has recently come to light. A small mushroom, Trogia sp. (Marasmiaceae), has been found to produce toxic amino acids, which may be acting synergistically with environmental barium. Interestingly, the Yunnan province is known for its wild mushrooms, many of which are exported around the world. This Trogia, however, has been deemed too small to be marketable, and is eaten locally.

Matango! My Review

2010-07-07T16:17:00.014-05:00

Matango! (Attack of the Mushroom People)
Color. 1963. 89 minutes, unrated. Directed by Ishiro Honda (famous for Godzilla and other kaiju films). You can watch the whole thing (in Japanese with English subtitles) here.
I recognized Akira Kubo from other Toho films, namely Destroy all Monsters, and Monster Zero. He was also in the Akira Kurosawa classic, Sanjuro. Other stars are also familiar Toho character actors. Also Yoshio Tsuchiya, also a star of several Godzilla films and Kurasawa classics. Kumi Mizuno, one of director Ishiro Honda's favorites.
The film begins like a dramatic version of Gilligan's Island. A ship with a passenger manifest including a professor, a singer, a plain jane, a mystery writer, and a millionaire (as well as a skipper and his flunky. Matango came out a year before Gilligan's Island.
The version I watched was dubbed and had subtitles. There were some interesting differences in the translation and the subtitles.
28 minutes in, we get to the first fungal reference. A derelict oceanographic ship covered in mold. Different colored mold in different parts of the ship. Radiation keeps the mold at bay. Thirty minutes in. We meet Matango, the giant mushroom. If only it were edible...
They are warned by the Captain's Log. DON'T eat the MUSHROOMS! They may contain nerve-damaging agents.
42 minutes in. More mushrooms. apparently growing on wood. "If you were starving, you'd eat them, wouldn't you?"
At 48 minutes, the first monster sighting. The damp! What happened? They seen the first mushroom man and then what happens?
1:09, The rain makes the mushrooms GROW.
1:13. The millionaire eats the mushrooms and starts tripping. The truth is revealed. Eat the mushrooms, become a mushroom. Oh. the laughing voices.
1:21. Apparently mushrooms are polite and knock before trying to ambush you. Is Matango a Russula? It breaks off pretty cleanly.
So how does it end? I don't want to spoil it.

As monster films go, this one wasn't particularly scary. I admit, the mushroom people don't have anything on Godzilla or any of the other kaiju. I do appreciate some of the touchs that I would expect from such a mycophilic culture as the Japanese. I did enjoy this movie more than I expected I would as a film. It tended to follow the Toho formula pretty well, dedicating almost half of the film to character development before the first tease of monster, with more and more monster footage leading up to the climax. It was easy to riff on it as I watched, a la MST3K. If you're a mycophile, it's definitely worth a watch, but over all I'd give it about 3 spores out of 5.

Happy Birthday, America!

2010-07-04T11:35:00.002-05:00

It is the Fourth of July, which every red-blooded American knows is Independence Day. Today we commemorate our secession from the United Kingdom, through the ratification of the Declaration of Independence (which you can read here). That's all for today, but I'll have more very soon.

Matango!

2010-06-25T10:42:00.003-05:00

Coming soon! My review of this film!

Humungus Fungus Fest

2010-06-22T22:47:00.003-05:00

Coming up 12-15 August 2010, the Humungus Fungus Fest in Crystal Falls, Michigan. The festival pays tribute to the Armillaria bulbosa thallus which lives is the area.

Armillaria spp. are basidiomycete, mushroom-forming fungi which feed off living and dead plant roots and stems, decaying them in the process. There are some situations where Armillaria can be an aggressive pathogen, killing even otherwise healthy individuals, but many are weakly pathogenic, opportunistic, or saprobic. The taxonomy of Armillaria has been rather confused, but is being worked out using molecular (DNA-based) tools. Also using these tools, and also through cultural experiments, it has been shown that single genetic individuals (genets) can be found occupying very large areas. The humongous fungus near Crystal Falls is estimated to cover 38 acres, and be at least 1,500 years old, and may be as much as 10,000 years old. The report was published in the prestigious journal, Nature. An excellent and more accessible summary of the article can be found here.

I think this has to rate as one of the top coolest things about fungi. Because this giant living organism is, most of the time, almost totally invisible. Armillaria does produce mushrooms, but only when conditions are right. The body of an Armillaria (or thallus, in mycospeak) is comprised predominantly of microscopically fine threads of mycelium, though these may coalesce and form rhizomorphs, which are sclerotized (toughened) tubes of hyphae that move resources like water and nutrients around the thallus. Dense mycelial fans can also be found under the bark of some affected trees. And most of it is underground, or hidden under bark. Thus, while invisibility comes in being hidden below ground, and also in being microscopic. And in a third sense it is invisible. In being so large that the eye could not see the entire limit of its body from a single vantage point.

However, the fungal record for largest and oldest living thing, being only the first one to surface, did not last. A 600 hectare thallus was identified in Washington state, and an Armillaria ostoyae thallus in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon was ascertained to cover 965 hectares, or about 2,385 acres, and could be as old as 8,650 years. As far as I know, this is the current record holder for Armillaria thalli.

I don't know if I'll make it to the festival in Michigan. It does look like a lot of fun. (I will not type "-gi" next to that, I will not. Because that would be totally corny). Cribbage Tournament!

New rare fungus discovered in England

2010-06-10T21:56:00.004-05:00

Multiclavula vernalis (Basidiomycota, Cantharellales, Clavulaceae) was recently discovered and confirmed in England. This fungus is rare, and while reported from more northerly parts of the British Isles, this is a first report for England proper. The genus is odd in that it's members are frequently mycobionts (the fungal partners in lichens) in basidiolichens . The vast majority of lichenized fungi are ascomycetes.

The fruiting body (like most true clavariaceous fungi) is like a fleshy tube. Coral fungi, though similar in morphology, are not closely related, but are considered allied in the "clavarioid" fungi.

Next installment of Mushrooms in the News

2010-06-03T13:23:00.002-05:00

Really, I should call it "fungi in the news", because relatively few fungi produce mushrooms. But here's a mushroom article. Not much there, other than the typical mycophobic opening and then the praise for the mushroom. But the underemphasized lede is that you can grow morels, which had long been impossible to grow in cultivation.

The Morgan Hills (California) Times reports that this year's Mushroom Mardi Gras attracted 80,000 people. Wow! That's quite a crowd for fungi!

In other news, fungi once again prove to harbor the best tools against bacteria. Only this time, it appears the compound in question may help defeat some of the most resistant bacteria.

In the bad news department, an MMA fighter who decided to consume mushroom tea with friends had it end in tragedy. His hallucinations led to the grisly murder of his friend, who he thought was possessed by the devil. Once again, I feel I have to say it, "Psychedelic mushrooms are DANGEROUS". But so is MMA fighting.

And finally, another bit of GOOD news, some rare Australian orchids may be have a new lease on life as they've been transplanted WITH THEIR FUNGI.

Bacteria

2010-05-29T17:33:00.003-05:00

Bacteria are not fungi, although like fungi they are microorganisms. Jonathan Coulton, a brilliant composer and musician sampled a KFC instruction video to come up with this catchy gem. What I learned as Actinomycetes are actually bacteria, not fungi, and now they are more appropriately labled Actinobacteria. They do exhibit a filamentous form which did cause some confusion among the taxonomists for a while.

I like this video and song, though I'm not a big fan of bacteria like I am of fungi. You can download the mp3 for free! See under Other Experiments

Trip to the Netherlands

2010-05-17T10:16:00.006-05:00

I just got back from a trip to the Netherlands and Belgium, accompanying my wife to one of her professional meetings. Before going I made plans to meet up with some professional contacts of my own. Fortunately, I did get to see Prof. Duur Aanen at Wageningen, and unfortunately I did not get to drop in at CBS to visit with Dr. Pedro Crous. By Friday, I was pretty wiped out from my travels and didn't feel up to getting on another train.

We stayed in Maastricht, in the Limburg region of the Netherlands, and it was quite nice. I got to eat plenty of the 'white gold of Limburg', which is their white asparagus. Though it looks like an achlorophyllous plant, the white color is achieved by etiolation, or deprivation of light. Soil is mounded up around the emerging stalks which then do not produce chlorophyll, yielding stalks that are tender and milder in flavor. Etiolation is part of the process used to produce enoki mushrooms from Flammulina velutipes. I once isolated from a F. velutipes sporocarp (mushroom), which grew in culture but not very happily. It actually produced tiny little mushrooms on the Petri plate, as if to say, "Get me the heck out of here!".

But I did get to meet with Duur Aanen, which was a great pleasure. One of his research foci has been fungus-farming termites. I got to help his students on some mound excavation when I was doing dissertation research in South Africa. I got to see his lab at Wageningen, and chat with some of his students.

Know Your Mushrooms, my review

2010-04-24T22:25:00.009-05:00

I finally got to see "Know Your Mushrooms" (2008), the documentary by director Ron Mann. I've blogged about this movie a couple of times before, how it was being made, how it features music by the Flaming Lips.

The film was shot primarily at the Telluride Mushroom Festival in Colorado, and features Larry Evans, a mycophile and "mushroom gypsy". Also featured is Gary Lincoff, who is the technical consultant on the film. They go on a foray, give lectures, and even have a mushroom parade.
The film explains and expands upon many of the common ideas about mushrooms. The most common mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus), mushrooms as sources of hallucinogenic substances, wild mushrooms as edible and choice vs. poisonous and toxic.

The film features several quick quizzes including questions about the Humongous Fungus, and some old timey footage from documentaries and other sources as well. And snippets of interviews and talks with mycophiles including composer John Cage, physician Dr. Andrew Weil and Terence McKenna

Also, there is some speculation about the role of psychedelic mushrooms in driving human evolution, the importance of mycorrhizal fungi, and the potential for mycoremediation and mycomedicinals .

At the end, there is a message. "End Fungiphobia now". I highly recommend this film for anyone who cares enough about fungi to have read to this point. While there was little new information for a big myco-nerd like me, the material is accurate, and presents an excellent introduction to the world of fleshy sporocarps.

Cane Creek Canyon Nature Preserve

2010-04-22T23:31:00.012-05:00

A good friend of mine from the AU Davis Arboretum invited me along on an Earth Day field trip up to the Cane Creek Canyon Nature Preserve, which is on land owned by Professor Jim Lacefield and his wife Faye. Prof. Lacefield is a geologist and author of the book "Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks", which is a fantastic reference for any student of Alabama's natural history.

Fossils! and a quarter for scale

The Preserve is in Colbert County, up in northwestern Alabama abutting Mississippi and Tennessee. They've got the biggest population of Alabama azalea (Rhododendron alabamense) in the state, as well as lots of other amazing flora.

The Alabama azalea in blooming glory

Azaleas, rhododendrons, blueberries, huckleberries, and many others are members of the Ericaceae, which is a family with its own sorts of mycorrhizas that are slightly different from typical ecto- or endo-mycorrhizas. Read the page from Penn State for more information.

Cypripedium parviflorum, a ladyslipper orchid.

All orchids are obligate mycotrophs, and all require nutrition from fungi at some point in their life cycle. Like the Monotropaceae (split off from the rest of the Ericaceae), some orchids lack chlorophyll throughout their lives and require nutrition from nearby photosynthesizing plants. That nutrition is mediated by fungi!

Pedicularis canadensis, Orobanchaceae

We also saw lots of the Canada lousewort pictured above. Louseworts are another hemiparasitic group of flowers, meaning they rely upon other plants. However, they do not require fungal mediation but produce their own haustoria with their roots.

As for the rest of the mycota, I didn't see a whole lot out there. Pretty much no mushrooms, but I did see a lot of mayapple rust. Mayapple is quite a common wildflower in the eastern US, and was flowering in great abundance yesterday. The distribution of the rust was very patchy, affecting single individuals here and there.

An uninfected mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum (Berberidaceae)

Mayapple rust is caused by Puccinia podophylli, and is an autecious rust, meaning it only requires one host. Compare this with apple-cedar rust, or cedar quince rust which are heteroecious. I *believe* it is also demicyclic (meaning it lacks a uredinial stage)

The upper (adaxial) leaf surface, note the discoloration and puckering

And the lower (abaxial) surface, with the characteristic aecial pustules.

As the host is not of much economical importance, not much research has been published on this rust for many years.

To sum up, not a great day for fungi, but a fantastic day for expanding my knowledge of Alabama's great flora and geological history.

White Nose Fungus getting closer to Alabama/Know Your Mushrooms DVD

2010-04-20T22:59:00.005-05:00

I've previously mentioned the white nose fungus, which has killed over a million bats in the eastern United States. This disease has led to the closing of several Alabama caves to try and prevent movement of the causal fungus, Geomyces destructans (link to pdf of the description of the fungus, via Tom Volk's Fungi). At present, the fungus has not been detected in Alabama, though it it advancing southward and getting close to western North Carolina, detected on the Tennessee side of Smoky Mountains National Park. This article has a current list of the states where WNF has been found, and known and potentially susceptible bat species further south. In my opinion the article is a little vague on those details.

In other myco-news, the film "Know Your Mushrooms" is out on DVD. I haven't seen it yet, but it just went to #1 on my NetFlix queue. I'll let you know what I think soon...

Holy Cow, I can't believe I missed this...

2010-04-15T16:54:00.006-05:00

I just learned from Mycorant that two of the three professors killed in the UAH shooting were fungal biologists (neither of whom have I met). Dr. Gopi Padila was one of the victims.. He specialized in fungal genomics, and was working on the sequence of the Laccaria bicolor genome.

Dr. Maria Ragland Davis was another victim. She also worked in fungal genomics, only in Botrytis cinerea, examining the secretome of the fungus with LC-MS (liquid chromatography/mass spectroscopy.

Dr. Adriel Johnson Sr., whose research was in the realm of cell biology and nutritional physiology was the the third victim.

My belated condolences to the families of all the victims.

Cedar quince rust

2010-04-09T12:23:00.013-05:00

Yesterday it rained, which was greatly needed to take some of the yellow out of the air. The pollen has been off the charts. I took my car to the car wash and a few hours later it was dusty yellow again. But another effect of the cool, wet conditions was the fruiting of this fungus on our small juniper trees. At least I think they're junipers, definitely Cupressaceae. Yesterday the fruitings of this fungus looked slimy, like this...
and this...

But today, they've dried up and look more like this...
And this...
What is this strange orange ooze? Spoiler alert! It's in the title of this post. Cedar quince rust is in the same genus of rusts as apple cedar rust, Gymnosporangium. And like G. juniperi-virginianae and most species in the genus they are heteroecious (requiring two hosts to complete the life cycle) and demicyclic (lacking a uredinial stage). The hosts are in the Cupressaceae and Rosaceae. But clearly this is not cedar-apple rust. The telia of G. juniperi-virginianae are formed out of gall-like growths on the stems. When conditions are right, the telial horns project out of orifices, kind of like the eyes and ears of a stress-doll.

THAT up there is cedar apple rust

Cedar-quince rust, on the other hand, isn't associated with complex galls like cedar-apple rust, though it may cause branch swellings and flaky bark. It's the most important Gymnosporangium rust on the rosaceous hosts, quinces and others, according to Sinclair et al. I can't seem to find my newer version right now, oh wait, there it is! The causal fungus is G. clavipes, and it infects far more than just quince, including more than 480 rosaceous species in 11 genera (again, according to Sinclair and Lyon)! As you can see from the photos above, the smaller juniper branches are killed by the fungus, though the basal infections don't appear to be killing the tree in any hurry.

I just went out to check on my cedar apple rust gall on the juniper in my front yard, and it's gone! I thought I'd see if it fruited after yesterday's rain, but it's no longer there. I guess I never posted pictures of it either. They were a little blurry. But I do see some more small infections of G. clavipes on the big tree in the front yard. And here's a link to an even better photo of a G. clavipes infection, as well.

Red bay wilt reported on Gulf Coast

2010-04-06T10:43:00.003-05:00

It was only a matter of time before this little ambrosia beetle brought its deadly cargo with it to Alabama and the Gulf coast. The ambrosia beetle Xyleborus glabratus is an exotic species, as is the fungus it carries, Raffaelea lauricola. The two work together to infest and infect red bay trees, which kills them in alarming fashion akin to other exotic organisms such as those causing Dutch elm disease and chestnut blight. It had been previously found along the southern Atlantic coast, and now this.

Of Allergies and the Lives of the Indoor Molds

2010-03-30T22:25:00.018-05:00

I moderated an actual comment about fungal allergens in Alabama. I get a few comments every now and then, but almost all of them are spam. I figure the few of you who may check in with me don't need to read any more ads for erection pills and other medications.

However, Shalleen asked an interesting question that I thought merited my research, even though it's a bit out of my wheelhouse.
Please note that I'm not trying to peddle medical advice. I am most certainly NOT a medical doctor. My perspective is that of a mycologist.

Allergies are extreme immune events which can be caused by breathing in of allergens. Pollen is a common allergy. I suffer from pollen allergies, which my father thought was ironic, given my training as a botanist. But overexposure to potential allergens can lead to increased sensitivity. I often tell people the worst part of having allergies and being a botanist is KNOWING what the pollen is trying to do to my nose.

Pollen is the source of the male gametes in seed-producing plants. Thus, pollen is analogous to sperm in animals. Produced in prodigious quantities, pollen requires a relatively small investment of energy, and each has a very low probability of fulfilling its purpose, fertilization of an ovule. Pollen is analogous to email spam or phishing in this way. Even though most of it is emitted without achieving its purpose, it is the rare hits that have a big payoff that make the investment of energy worth it.

Fungal spores are similar to pollen in that they are produced in great quantities with little chance for success at the individual level. How great a quantity? According to Bryce Kendrick's "The Fifth Kingdom", a single Ganoderma applanatum conk can release 30 BILLION spores A DAY!
Compare that with an estimate of 85 million sperm produced by a human male in a day, and you can see that spores are quite abundant in the air.

I should note, medical mycology is not for the faint of heart. The number of fungal pathogens of humans is relatively small relative to both the number of fungal species and to the number of biotic human pathogens (including viruses and bacteria). However, some of those few fungi that cause mycoses (singular: mycosis, inflammatory diseases caused by fungi) tend to disfigure people in grotesque ways. Google Image Search at your own risk.

As for Alabama specific allergenic fungi, I do not know of any such list. However, a paper was recently published in the eminent Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS) which examined the fungal community in dust samples from 76 locations throughout the world, in both temperate and tropical on six continents, and in several types of buildings. A Scientific American article discussing the paper can be found here. Using high throughput sequencing (454 sequencin g) they were able to examine the fungal community in dust samples. Using PCR primers specific to fungi, the researchers were able to amplify fungal genes in the dust sample, including many that may not be have been revealed by simply culturing. The primers anneal to sites that (ideally) all fungi possess but non-fungi do not, and amplify regions that are more free to vary. Each unique variation of that gene in the large sample is a haplotype, which can then be compared to known sequences in GenBank and classified by their similarity to known values. By looking at the different haplotypes, researcher identify Operational Taxonomic Units, or OTUs. In some cases an OTU represents a known species, matching 100% completely with a GenBank sequence, but most sequences are only close matches, in which case they may come from undescribed species, or be different population of previously described species, or just something entirely new, in which case a best BLAST match can only be at the family level or above. Thus OTUs are the diversity units. Among the most interesting results are the relative diversity of fungal OTUs in the tropics compared to the temperate regions. In most living taxa (plants, animals, other fungi), diversity is greater in the tropics than in the temperate regions. In the case of the dust samples, there were more fungal OTUs in the temperate samples on either side of the tropics.

Also, they found greater similarity in fungal communities that were relatively clustered spatially than in similar construction. Thus a residential home was more likely to share OTUs with a nearby warehouse than a residential home further away. Thus, it is likely that Alabama does have a locally unique indoor mycota (list of fungal species), but that remains to be explored. Hopefully it's not much much too late for you, Shalleen.

Chanteuse Katy Perry is a fungivore or possibly a mycophage

2010-03-24T23:33:00.003-05:00

From some corner of the Internet that I rarely frequent, I find this item. Katy Perry, the British pop singer, eats edible mushrooms as a regular part of her diet, and claims they help her keep in shape. Well, certainly eating mushrooms will help when compared with some of her other favorite menus items, including the infamous In 'n Out double double. I used to love I'nO when I lived in California, but now it's all items that are off my menu (See my post on Statins). So I'm eating more mushrooms as well. Mostly the button variety, good old Agaricus bisporus. Now I'm wishing I'd gotten some of those black trumpets at the Dekalb Farmer's Market. Hmm. Maybe next time.

Also, the mushroom ravioli were quite good, as was the tempeh I had this evening for dinner. I attempted an Indonesian tempeh curry, which was also quite good, though I made it a bit too salty. I usually don't care for sweet potatoes all that much, but I liked them in this dish.

So what is the difference between a fungivore and a mycophage? A fungivore is an animal that consumes primarily fungi, as is a mycophage. However, a mycophage can also refer to a virus that infects fungi. I'm not sure if I would limit fungivory to those animals that specialize on fungi. After all, to the fungus being eaten, it's probably of little difference whether it's being eaten as the main course or an appetizer. Fungivory and mycophagy, oddly may be even more nuanced in any differences the two terms may have. According to "Ainsworth and Bisby's Dictionary of the Fungi" (at least the version that I have, not the newest version) this viewpoint is supported, and they also seem to agree that even non-specialists may be considered fungivores/mycophages.

Dekalb Farmer's Market

2010-03-22T12:43:00.002-05:00

I finally got out to the Dekalb Farmer's Market in Decatur, Georgia. Wow! What an interesting place. They won't let you take pictures inside, but once you get the merchandise out, you can photograph it all you want, I suppose. Up there is a picture of some mushroom-filled ravioli that they made on site, which I think I'll be having for dinner tonight. My daughter beckoned me over to the "Mush Room", where all the fresh mushrooms were on display. They had some lovely shiitake, oyster mushrooms, maitake, portabellos and what else? Black trumpets, and ... I can't remember. I picked up some dried oysters, which were an absolute steal. Only a dollar for a small tubful. They also had dried shiitake and dried morels, the latter of which were a bit rich for my blood at $17 for the same-sized small tub. Also got some tempeh, which I haven't seen in a long while. I quit eating meat for Lent, so I'm trying to get all my vegetarian protein substitutes in. Tempeh is an Indonesian soybean product, made by inoculating cooked soy beans with Rhizopus oligosporus, a zygomycete. I'm sure I'll be digging into that soon enough. But I should probably marinate it sometime soon, in some soy sauce and rice vinegar.

Possibly the cure for vegetarian bacon

2010-03-02T23:57:00.003-06:00

Now I'll admit that I've previously dabbled with vegetarianism, mostly on a dare. Where I went into the Peace Corps I was advised to get reacquainted with the eating of meat to avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings, and I did. I like meat. It's tasty. But I also probably need to cut back, given my recent posts on cholesterol and my fight with it. I've cut way back on the amount of meat I eat, and I've quit eating meat for Lent, though I still eat of the cold-water fishes like salmon which are thought to be beneficial. One of the worst offenders is bacon, which besides being greasy is also high in sodium and other things that one shouldn't eat but are delicious nonetheless. The other night I was rolling some of my own sushi rolls, which is a thing I like to do, and I tried something new. By new I mean it's the first time I've tried it, it has undoubtedly been tried before. I soaked some dried shiitake mushrooms, (that's Lentinula edodes, for those who may have forgotten this is a mycology blog), then marinated them in soy sauce and a splash of rice wine vinegar before slicing and sauteing in canola oil. I swear, it tasted just like bacon, at least more than any of the other bacon alternatives foisted upon the people. These days, this is the best I have to blog about.

Fungal infection? Try drying out for a while

2010-02-09T11:40:00.003-06:00

So fungi have made the cover of Science, as parasites of bdelloid rotifers. The rotifers, which are metazoans, are asexual. So the question being addressed by these researchers is, how have these rotifers survived their pathogens for millions of years without the benefit of sexual reproduction? Sexual reproduction is considered by most biologists to be a key component of evolution, as without genetic recombination, natural selection cannot act. The answer they found is anhydrobiosis, or living without water. The rotifers are able to survive dessication, while their fungal pathogens aren't. The longer the dessication, the fewer pathogen propagules survive. The dessication also makes the rotifers lighter, which enables them to be dispersed through the air to escape.

I think there are a lot of answers to the question of asexuality within the fungi themselves. There are many, many lineages of fungi which have apparently lost the ability to undergo sexual reproduction. Like so many corners of mycology, there are several terms applied to them, Deuteromycetes (an older terms), Imperfect Fungi, or Mitosporic Fungi (cf. Meiosporic Fungi) to list three. Asexuality has developed in many fungal lineages, that is to say, the Deuteromycetes are polyphyletic. Or to say it another way, asexuality has arisen several times over evolutionary history.

Statins

2010-01-14T17:27:00.004-06:00

I visited a primary care physician for the first time in about four years. The last time I visited one was before coming to Alabama. My blood work came back showing that my previously OK cholesterol levels had gone ballistic. I attribute the jump to getting cozy with the southern diet. Too much BBQ, too many chicken fingers. So the bad news is that the good times of ignorantly eating and drinking to my heart's (dis)content are over. Better to know now than to find out in the emergency room, I suppose. So what does this have to do with fungi? It has to do with the prescription the doctor handed me.

As it turns out, the cholesterol-lowering wonder drugs of the 21st century, statins, were originally derived from fungi. Now mainly synthesized, these drugs work by inhibiting a key enzyme in cholesterol production, HMG-CoA reductase. Some of the first research on statins was performed by Dr. Akira Endo, a biochemist, who found cholesterol-inhibiting compounds in Penicillium citrinum. Penicillium spp., besides being very common mold agents, also gave us the first antibiotic discovery, penicillin.
Endo and Masao Kuroda hypothesized that Fungi could defend themselves from other organisms by inhibiting cholesterol production, and fortunately for millions of people, they were correct.
The ability to produce statins is apparently widespread throughout the true Fungi, even the oyster mushroom is naturally high in lovastatin (link to PDF). Antibiotics and statins, two of the most important medical discoveries of the past 100 years. Thanks, Fungi!

Update-1/19/10. I just found this article, which may help defuse one of the problems with statins, the grapefruit juice contraindication. The answer? more edible fungi, of course!

On or about this data in Alabama fungal history...

2010-01-06T21:44:00.003-06:00

George Washington Carver died. The 'Black Leonardo' is most famous for his work with peanuts, making darn near everything with them, he got his start at the institution which is now Iowa State University, where he earned his Master's degree, and worked in plant pathology and mycology. What did he do? I surely don't know. But given his status among the luminaries that Alabama may claim (having taught just down the road at Tuskegee Institute), I'd like to pay homage.

Another great Alabama local commercial

2010-01-04T17:16:00.002-06:00

Another great local commercial.

Phyllotopsis nidulans

2009-12-16T14:35:00.003-06:00

Just got out in the woods yesterday. Probably my last time at this site over near Tuscaloosa. I came upon these lovely orange babies on a snag.
They look superficially like oysters, but on pine? No, these are the orange mock oyster, Phyllotopsis nidulans. Astipitate (without a stipe or stalk), on wood, these ones didn't smell fetid to me though they are reported to be nasty smelling. The pileus is fluffy in appearance on the top.

I just recently discovered another mycoblog, Mycorant. They have a link to my blog (thanks!) and do have some of the same material (i.e. fungal news), but a lot more of it. Did they get the inspiration for the name from looking upon my blog? Maybe. I'd like to think that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I recommend checking it out.

Ridiculous

2009-12-06T22:25:00.003-06:00

One of my goals in writing this blog is to act as ombudsman for fungi. Why? Because fungi are, in my mind, fascinating organisms to study. It is true that fungi may interfere with human lives as agents of disease, and reduce yields of food crops. However, one fungal product has saved more lives than any other modern medical miracle except perhaps vaccinations, penicillin.

I came across this article recently, about the banning of yellow ribbons to honor soldiers in Litchfield, Connecticut. The reasons the town council gave for banning the ribbons were ridiculously flimsy. One reason was that the ribbons may cause a tree-killing fungus. This is absolute rubbish. Once again, fungi are being used as a scapegoat, and thankfully the citizens are not amused.

Some more fungal news

2009-12-01T18:23:00.004-06:00

I've been slacking again. I just got back from a visit with my folks in Charlottesville, VA, where I had few fungal adventures, other than finding this lovely oyster mushroom growing on a tree on the Lawn of the UVa campus.

What else has been going on? Well, for one thing, Morrissey, former singer for the Smiths, decided he would launch into a tirage against Aer Lingus, calling it Aer Fungus. Grrr, why? Such a feeble insult! Clearly he knows little about the wonderful world of fungi.

In other news, a prime specimen of the white truffle was purchased by a Philadelphia restaurant for $4,100. The truffle weighed in at over a pound, and was found in Italy. You can see the fungal nugget in all its glory in this YouTube video.

Perhaps I should be looking for a job in the UK? A 90% drop in the number of mycologists may lead to more mushroom poisonings, according to this article.

And finally, an investigation into the abundance of fungi in mammoth dung has provided evidence that the decline of their populations was long and drawn out, not precipitous as would be expected in a meteor-caused extinction.

This day in fungal history and other fungal news

2009-10-27T23:01:00.003-05:00

So it's been a while since I mentioned any fungi in the news, but I thought this tidbit of fungal history merited mention. On this day in 1931, an outbreak of Dutch elm disease was reported in the Greater New York area. The causal agent, Ophiostoma ulmi (and later O. novo-ulmi as well) is an exotic fungus, and the naive elm hosts are killed in great numbers. The name of the disease comes from the nation where the earliest research was conducted. There isn't a "Dutch elm", and the agent is not from the Netherlands. The fungus currently pictured at right is a Leptographium, a closely related group of fungi.

Fungi are also getting a lot of press for the diseases they are causing in the animal kingdom. Frog populations have been in decline due to chytridiomycosis, and bats are getting hammered by white nose syndrome, caused by another fungus, Geomyces sp. The risk has prompted closure of several of Alabama's caves.

In happier news, a violin made of fungus-infected wood outplayed a Stradivarius (they don't mention WHICH fungi). Previously I had blogged an article which suggested that Stradivari used fungus-infested wood to produce his masterpieces.

And finally, a fungus, Metarhizium, may be enlisted to help fight varroa mites, which have been linked to honeybee decline.

Jack O'Lantern Mushrooms

2009-10-26T16:51:00.002-05:00

My eye was drawn to these babies as I was driving around town this afternoon. I do believe what we have here is jack o lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus sp.). They are common at the base of oak trees or on adjacent roots (as these were). These ones were really bright orange, so they stood out and I just had to stop and tiptoe across a bit of lawn to get these pics.
I've had a friend mistake these for chanterelles, as they do have decurrent gills, but fortunately she didn't eat them, as they are poisonous. Probably won't kill you, but you won't be happy for a while if you do try eating them.

Just in time for Halloween!

2009-10-26T16:51:00.000-05:00

Montana!

2009-10-24T11:35:00.004-05:00

So, if you've visited my blog from stem to stern, you've seen the map of all the states I've visited. It's only there to shamelessly burnish my own glory, I admit. Well, right now I'm in Montana, which means I've added a state to my life list, leaving only Alaska, Delaware, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. I may have visited Delaware and not remembered it.

I'm planning on starting a post-doc out here in January, at least part-timing between Montana and Alabama, since I've got some roots in Alabama the Beautiful.

Here's a pic taken in Alabama by a friend of mine. I wish I could've seen this in person. That does appear to be a Hericium (coralloides or ramosum?), which is edible and choice.

A little bit of prime Alabamiana

2009-10-22T09:21:00.004-05:00

Okay, this has nothing to do with fungi, but speaks volumes about Alabama. It's so awesome I had to watch it twice, post it here, and then I'm going to watch it again a time or two.

Lots of interesting stuff out there....

2009-09-23T22:41:00.000-05:00

I've been remiss in my blogging, especially so since there are SO MANY FUNGI fruiting out there, with all the rain we've been having. I recently went out with a friend to Tuskegee National Forest, where we saw a ton of stuff. And just about everywhere you look in the loveliest village on the plains, you see fairy rings.
Here's one.
And another.
And another.
And yet another. Really, these things are EVERYWHERE. I've blogged about them before, like in my neighbor's yard (UPDATE: she moved away! The new neighbors do not appear to be so mycophobic).

Today I was out in the woods near Tuscaloosa, and saw some fine fungi out there. I'm most jazzed about the gilled bolete I found, Phylloporus rhodoxanthus (sensu lato). I knew of its existence, and I can't remember if I'd ever found one before, but I saw the cap from above (being taller than most mushrooms) and thought "Aha, bolete!"

Turning it over, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find this:
It reminded me of a time (in California) when I picked up a Douglas-fir cone with a mushroom growing out of it, which I thought was Strobiluris trullisatus, and was surprised to find teeth (it was Auriscalpium vulgare). This mushroom looks just like a gilled mushroom (or "agaric") only with a bright yellow hymenium like a bolete. This particular one did not stain blue, which can happen, but does have forked gills (click on photo to zoom in), like a transitional form between true gills and the poroid (actually tuboid, boletes have tubes, not pores).
Also on the topic of boletes, I found some nice specimens of Strobilomyces dryophilus, "old man of the woods", good enough to eat, which I just might do!

Been too busy to blog of late...

2009-07-30T19:35:00.000-05:00

I've been getting ready to end my days as a grad student/indentured servant, and I've finished my PhD. Tomorrow I'm off to Portland, OR for the American Phytopathological Society's annual meeting, where I'll get to talk about some of my research.

Russula in my backyard

2009-07-19T19:21:00.000-05:00

This photo and the following two are of a mushroom I found in my backyard. It's a Russula sp. How do I know? Well, for one, the bright white gills which reflect the white spore print. Okay, that's not a great character because gill color often doesn't betray spore print color. But the next clue is the crisp break in the stalk. This is a giveaway for the Russulaceae, and is caused by distinctive boxy shaped cells called sphaerocysts. The two main genera in the Russulaceae are Russula and Lactarius. Lactarius spp, as the name suggests, exude a milky secretion when the cap or stem are broken. So that leaves us with Russula. Which Russula? I don't know. There are no distinctively green capped Russula spp. in Bessette et al. Some Russulaceae are edible and choice, others not so much and could hurt you.

2009-07-19T19:17:00.001-05:00

2009-07-19T19:17:00.000-05:00

2009-06-20T14:17:00.000-05:00

Lots of material for bawdy jokes in this one.

2009-06-17T22:47:00.000-05:00

The stinkhorns are a group of mushrooms that are even more phallic than most mushrooms, and include a genus, Phallus. There's a new species of Phallus to be described in the next Mycologia from Sao Tome and Principe. It is to be named after the expedition leader, a herpetologist

Boletes

2009-06-16T11:04:00.000-05:00

Found some more boletes. I think I'm ready to try some. They look like
B. hortonii But I'll drop some ammonia ok just to be sure. Also looks
like some are being parasitized by Hypomyces (white stuff)

A-looky heeyah!

2009-05-29T10:56:00.000-05:00

I was walking out of the lab today and came across this bright orange something. It turned out to be a chanterelle, the first I've seen in Alabama. All this late wet weather we've been having has brought out all kinds of strange things.

This one is most likely either Cantharellus confluens or C. lateritius. Bessette et al. have pictures of both but indicate that they may be a single species. The folds are not well developed, so they don't look very much like gills, as chanterelles are not directly related to gilled mushrooms in the strict sense. Chanterelles are some of the more 'easily identified' mushrooms, but as always, that's a relative term.

So what did I do? I said I wasn't going to eat it, because it looked a little beat up, but the more I looked at it and the more certain I became of my ID, the more it seemed to be crying out for some brushing off, chopping, and frying in Amish butter. So that's what I did. Just brush off the dirt (soggy mushrooms aren't very nice), chop, fry in butter with a pinch of salt. Dee-licious!

I'd almost forgotten how delicious fresh wild mushrooms can be. What a treat!

The Hops are Free!

2009-05-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

Good news, fans of craft beers! Governor Bob Riley has signed off on the "Gourmet Beer Act", which will allow for a greater diversity of beers in the state of Alabama. The Law previously restricted the sale of beers over 6.0 % alcohol by volume, the new limit is 13.9%. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Here's a photo

2009-05-16T18:09:00.000-05:00

Looks like ol' Turf Doctor's on the case there, eh?

Techno-savvy?

2009-05-16T18:02:00.001-05:00

So I'm going to try this mobile blogging. I went on a bike ride
between showers, and man, did I get worked to an embarrassing degree. I
did stop and smell the mushrooms, so to speak, including these
Ganoderma lucidum sporocarps. Now how do I attach photos?

Truth in aversion

2009-05-16T14:57:00.001-05:00

Okay class, here's the question: what is wrong with the following statement "Unlike any ordinary vegetable or plant, mushrooms are actually members of the fungus family"

Pretty good for a layman, to acknowledge that mushrooms are not plants. But of course, the correct answer is that Fungi (yes, big F) are not a family, but a kingdom, in the sense of Whittaker's five-kingdom tree of life. Yes, Dr. Robert Whittaker, the same ecologist who monographed the flora of the Siskiyou Mountains straddling Oregon and California, he was the one who wisely deemed fungi not plants, at least he was the first to raise a decent stink about it!

Recall from your intro biology: Kingdom, Phylum (or Division, technically, since Fungi are named under the International Botanical Code of Nomenclature), Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. So we're only off by four levels in the hierarchy. And now we add domains above kingdoms, to really try and clarify things: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. Fungi (with a small f) being in the last with every other macroscopic organism.

In other, more local fungal news, be on the lookout for oak leaf blister! Personally, (and I confess to being biased) I think ugly is not an appropriate term for the blisters. Okay, maybe they're not particularly beautiful, even by my standards. The causal agent is Taphrina caerulescens, which is an ascomycete which doesn't produce an ascoma, but produces naked asci on the surface of the host. These fungi typically deform the plant that they've infected, as in peach leaf curl (caused by T. deformans), or if you've ever seen deformed alder cones (caused by T. alni). These are considered a basal lineage of ascomycetes.

Also, if you're looking for interesting and tasty ways to cook mushrooms, rather than rant about them, try The Mushroom Channel. It looks like we may get our links from the same source (Google News Alerts), but they focus more on the culinary side of things.

I want to note that a friend of mine recently told me she'd found some morels growing 'nearby'. This was in a site that she's had her eye one for years without seeing them. I guess the bounty of rain we've received has inspired them to sporulate. Bully for them!
And no, she wouldn't tell me where they were.

Update: 28 Jan 2011. I had to update the title of this post because the previous title was attracting spam like you wouldn't believe!

Brrr!

2009-04-30T15:09:00.000-05:00

As the weather starts to heat up here, it's nice to think about cooler climes. Perhaps not quick as cool as Antarctica, but it's a nice segue to this item. Antarctica has been thought to be fungus-free, as there is little available water or plant life to feed them. But Dr. Bob Blanchette has found some new wood-decay fungi that are feeding on Scott's huts. Amazing, eh?

Cornell University to return fungal collection to China

2009-04-14T23:30:00.000-05:00

In 1937, as the Japanese invaded China during World War II, a Chinese mycologist, educated in the United States, packed up some of the most prized specimens from a national botanic institute in Nanking. He loaded them on oxcarts and had them smuggled them out of the country to his alma mater in the 'States, Cornell University.

Now, these specimens are being repatriated including the rare Lentinus tigrinus, pictured above. (a local species of Lentinus is pictured in the masthead). A neat story you can read all about here. And here's a nice quote about the specimens from Cornell's Herbarium Director Kathie Hodge "To an average person, they look like something you would sweep off your kitchen floor. But under the microscope they're beautiful and exciting and incredibly diverse." How very true.

But of course, because the story is about fungi, it's filed under STRANGE (sigh).

Ridiculous, but I'm not sure what to make of it...

2009-04-07T14:38:00.000-05:00

More fungal headlines. Today's top story "Mushroom could ruin wedding couples' dreams". Now, I'm not sure what is the most ridiculous thing about this article. The perceived threat to the fungus, the blaming of the fungus, or the eco-hate that the article seems to be fomenting. The author's ignorance is clear. He writes of the 'potential presence of mycelium, a threatened type of lawn fungi'. Mycelium is a growth habit of fungi, not a type of fungus per se. Mycelium is the lattice of microscopic tubes (hyphae) that define the bodies of most fungi (yeasts are the most important exception). The economic downturn has now sunk to pointing fingers at fungi as standing in the way of progress.

Some fungi out there

2009-04-02T10:21:00.000-05:00

It's been a wet spring, for sure. And wet weather brings fungi as sure as it brings the wildflowers.
I just found some interesting little harbingers of spring out there recently. Urnula craterium, (Ascomycota, Pezizales, Sarcostromataceae) which was growing just like they said it might. It looked like it might have been growing out of the wood, but it actually grows out of the ground.
Here's a look inside the apothecium, you can see that the cup extends down pretty far in there.

I think I also figured out another one of my mystery fungi, one that I'd seen several months ago. I'd taken photos but didn't quite have a handle on the name. I was thinking Pezizales, or maybe something with some type of Hypocrealean mycoparasitism, but not sure what. I'm thinking this other guy is Humaria hemisphaerica, at least from looking at the picture from Phillips' Mushrooms of North America. That's my best guess thus far, anyway.

March is Maitake Mushroom Month

2009-03-21T08:08:00.000-05:00

From the "now you tell me department". Still a little bit of the Maitake Mushroom Month left, so go and get you some! I haven't had maitake in a long while. I've never seen them around Auburn, but I'm sure you can get them in Atlanta. I had some friends who used to grow maitake and other less well know cultivatable edibles out in California. Maitake is Japanese for the dancing mushroom, because finding this fungus fruiting led the finder to dance with joy. This mushroom can be found growing in the wilds of the Northeast and out to Idaho, according to Wikipedia.

A bit of Alabamiana for St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-17T12:23:00.001-05:00

Some Good News about Mushrooms

2009-03-14T11:36:00.001-05:00

Okay, enough rants. I've been a bit negative about how mushrooms have been portrayed in the news, even thought "all press is good press". I should just seize the opportunity to use the teaching moments at face value.
Here are some good news stories about fungi.
First, a video about how fungal mycelia can be used as a green insulating material:

Second, a study of Chinese women suggesting that mushrooms(what kind? maybe oysters) and green tea may reduce the risk of breast cancer.
What else can mushrooms do? Perhaps be used to replace potentially hazardous preservatives like BHT.
A documentary called "Know Your Mushrooms" is slated to be released soon, featuring music by the Flaming Lips.
Here's an excerpt (without music):

And finally, perhaps the best use of an acronym I've seen in a while; the Multidisciplinary UnSheltered Homeless Relief Outreach Of Morgantown (WV), or MUSHROOM.

Need oysters in T-town?

2009-03-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

A couple of students at 'Bama (the University of Alabama, to be a bit more formal) have found a way to make a few ducats in their backyard, growing oyster mushrooms. They've started a company called Tuscaloosa Organic Produce to sell their products. Pretty good for 'Tide fans ;{)-

MSN posted the same video on the front page!

2009-03-13T16:34:00.000-05:00

The video I linked to recently has made it to MSN's front page video. Someone added the clever comment "fascinatingly disgusting". Sigh, I must disagree. Also, it's been reposted on a site called "Stupid Videos", which may explain the person who called it fascinatingly disgusting. Fascinating yes. Disgusting? only to the ignorant.

Outdoor Alabama picks mushroom photo to grace cover!

2009-03-03T09:17:00.000-06:00

A rare bit of Alabama mushroom news! Outdoor Alabama, the monthly magazine of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has selected the winners of the 2009 Photo Contest. The Grand Prize Winner is an Amanita! Okay, the winner is actually a 12-year-old shutterbug from Birmingham, but his subject is an Amanita. Also, the First, Second and Third Place Winners in the Flora section were all images of fungi, since lichens are part fungus as well.

While I'm happy for the fungi, it is a pet peeve of mine that fungi are referred to as "flora". This is one of those relict institutions from the days when fungi were thought to be closely related to plants. After all, both fungi and plants are non-motile (Oomycetes, Chytrids and slime molds being important exceptions). Fungal nomenclature follows the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (rather than the zoological, e.g. fungal families end in -aceae instead of -idae). But the fact is that fungi are actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants (as in sharing a most recent common ancestor).

Do I think Outdoor Alabama should have a separate category for Mycota? To allow the Flora a chance to shine again in photo contests? No, not right now anyway. I just hope the world is someday ready to embrace this level of biological literacy.

And also, if you want to see some AMAZING photos of fungi, I highly recommmend Taylor Lockwood's books and website, link over there on the right-->