Alaskan rust spores identified!

At long last, the news I've been waiting for!  The mysterious Alaskan orange goo, thought at first to have been eggs of something, or possibly the dinonflagellate Noctiluca, later discovered to be rust spores, has been positively identified. The mystery rust is Chrysomyxa ledicola, which causes spruce-labrador tea needle rust.  The spores identified were the urediniospores, which is known as the repeating stage of macrocyclic rusts.  It is common for rusts to produce ba-jillions of spores, especially urediniospores, to keep reinfecting their alternate hosts.  In this case, that alternate host is labrador tea Ledum spp., though the NCCOS webpage lists it as Rhododendron tomentosum.   That name isn't accepted by PLANTS.usda.gov, which is my source for this kind of information.  That fact helps explain how the source of the orange goo was originally so mysterious.  While the primary host, spruces (Picea spp.), are a group that would be difficult to hide that many spores on without someone taking notice, labrador tea is a common understory plant that wouldn't raise as many alarm flags.

Fungi music!

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

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)

Strange news

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. 

Life imitates art (?)

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.

Happy Birthday to a prominent Alabamian?

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

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. 

New book for me to peruse/ Other fungal news

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.

WOW! Cool fungus-orchid news

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.

Mobile Leprechaun Remix

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

The End of History

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.

Matango!

Coming soon! My review of this film!

Some more fungal news

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.

Lots of material for bawdy jokes in this one.

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

A bit of Alabamiana for St. Patrick's Day

Not Alabama, but next door

Would you get your girlfriend a chainsaw for Valentine's Day? You might could...

Sorry for the delay...

I've been in South Africa for the past month and a half, and will be until the end of November. But there has been some interesting mushroom news out there...

First of all, I haven't been able to find out which of these lovely ladies became the Texas Mushroom Festival Queen, and I'm pretty ticked off about it. There's been no follow up. (sigh)
But other interesting news has been developing.

Could fungi have contributed to the Stradivarius sound? This article suggests so. Xylaria longipes is not really a mushroom, per se, but is related to what I've been calling dead man's fingers. I had a fling with this family awhile ago, especially the genus Hypoxylon, and was interested in the decay caused by these fungi. While basidiomycetes, especially polypores, cause rots of the brown and white varieties. Ascomycetes like Xylaria cause 'soft rot', which has been classified as a type of white rot, but apparently the loss of wood structure is not as extreme, and can apparently still be used for wood under stress (like in a violin).

In other news, a Spanish man found a puffball weighing over 17 pounds. He declared it "too good to eat". Actually, my experience has been that bigger isn't always better with fruiting bodies, as far as flavor goes. Usually, the bigger ones are older, and may be past their peak. The puffball in question was a basidiocarp of Lycoperdon perlatum (in the article, Lycoperdum, which is incorrect), which has a funny translation.

And finally, mycodiesel? It appears that a certain fungus may be capable of turning wood fiber (cellulose) into diesel. Now wouldn't that be something? I mean, it shouldn't be such a surprise, seeing as yeasts have been converting sugar into ethanol for us for thousands of years, as well as making carbon dioxide to give us this day our daily bread. In the case of myco-diesel, the fungus in question is a mold (or mould, if you will), in the sense that it is a microfungus that may produce a macroscopic fruiting body, typically somewhere you don't want it. You can learn a lot about moulds (or molds) from this site. Why are molds and molds so different? I've often wondered, but have no answer.

In the mushroom news...

Let's see, what's going on in the mushroom news this week.
First, the bad news: more mushroom poaching tales here and a bit more locally(Florida), here. People eating poisonous mushrooms. A Nebraska woman complained about the mold in her apartment, and was ignored until a mushroom was found growing out of her carpet. Note: Molds do not produce mushrooms. Both are fungi, and require damp conditions to sporulate (fruit), but they are NOT the same thing. No word on what kind of mushroom it was, of course. Could have been a morel!

Now the good news: Mushrooms provide some good nutrition, may even be considered a SUPERFOOD! And in other good news, an enzyme produced by many fungi, laccase, may serve as an important catalyst in fuel cells. Maybe some good environmental benefits from them fungi, eh?
And by next week we should know who the next Texas Mushroom Festival Queen will be!

Got my new mushroom book

I just got my copy of Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States, by Alan E. Bessette, William C. Roody, Arleen R. Bessette, and Dail L. Dunaway. What can I tell you? I'm tickled pink to have it in my library, and it will certainly help me in my identifications. They cover lots of different macrofungi other than gilled mushrooms sensu stricto (agarics), including puffballs, crusts, cup and saucers, bird's nests, carbon fungi, and polypores. Beautifully illustrated, including keys (which I haven't gotten to test out yet), and even some mushroom recipes. Unfortunately, I'm about to leave the country for a couple of months, so I'll miss a good chunk of the fall fruiting, as well as the rest of the college football season, baseball playoffs, and elections.
It's a bit spendy, but an indispensable addition to any Alabamian mycologist's library.

In Alabama news, you may have heard of Dothan, Alabama's recent incentive program to bring more Jews to the area. If you are Jewish, and are considering moving to an area of moderate climate, you may wish to consider Dothan, as there's a cash prize involved.

So you've discovered an ancient yeast in an amber deposit, what do you do?

Brew beer, of course! That's what a Cal Poly researcher did. The amber deposit may be as old as 45 million years, and had over 2000 different microorganisms trapped inside, including a yeast which, although a bit choosy in its carbon diet, still was able to ferment and make beer.

In other cool myco-news, an article just came out in PLoS ONE about the speed of spore discharge in some coprophilous fungi. It turns out that some fungi can shoot their spores at speeds up to 55 miles per hour. Among those fungi examined was a species of Pilobolus, the hat-throwing zygomycete (not the dance troupe), which is an important part of any intro mycology lab, and which has a very cool mechanism for shooting its spores straight up into the air for maximal dispersal.
To view the action, Yafetto et al. used a camera with an amazing 250,000 frames per second capture rate!