Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
For Valentine's Day, poetry
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.
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.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Kingdom for a day
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.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The latest in the fungal news...
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.
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.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Site Redesign
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.
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.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Just found this site via...
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.
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.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Organism of the Day: Armillaria mellea
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)