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George F. Atkinson

Step back a century and meet Cornell’s George F. Atkinson in this introduction by Torben Russo, Assistant Curator at the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium.

On November 14th, 1918, Cornell’s first mycologist, George Francis Atkinson, preferring wind and rain over the comforts of home, died of pneumonia after collecting mushrooms near Mount Rainier in Washington State. At 64 years old he was one of the nation’s preeminent mycologists, working on what might have been his greatest work. His passion for collecting, photography, and research quickly and quietly evaporated at the height of his career.

Mycophiles are a unique lot, often identifiable by the baskets they carry in the woods and a passion for certain edibles. G.F. Atkinson took his passion for mycology to another level. He certainly had an interest in edibles as his book Studies of American Fungi: Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. implies. He was also a pioneer in mycological photography, and had a thirst for research. His unique focus, which led him to describe nearly 300 species and to accumulate over 90,000 specimens, leaves him with few peers. There are sparse clues to his mindset; little is known beyond Atkinson the mycologist. He ran away from home at the young age of 13, worked in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territories driving a stagecoach and fending off highway robbers, and worked a brief stint on a Mississippi river boat. He was a man forged of pure physical labor and stood just over six feet tall with large strong hands. Yet he was brilliant and, realizing he wanted more out of life, went back to school to make his way, putting physical labor behind him to pursue more intellectual endeavors. Atkinson was a student of Botany at Cornell and after graduating he kept to his nomadic ways, working in the southeast as he refined his interests. Studies in diseases of agricultural crops led to mycology, and the knowledge he brought back to Cornell as a well-rounded mycologist led to a new vision that influences how mycologists think today.

Atkinson was a pioneer in mycology. He helped standardize the study and documentation of fungi at major collections in Europe and the U.S., produced nearly 200 published works, and, as a Cornell Professor, founded a major lineage of outstanding North American mycologists.* His award-winning photography was legendary and a key step in standardizing fungal taxonomy. He took photomicrographs and measurements of spores, and photographs of fruiting bodies in various stages of development. His photographs were key in standardizing fungal taxonomy. Some of the species he was the first to photograph and name include Amanita bisporigera, Amanita flavoconia and Stropharia hardii. Today Atkinson’s name is not well known, but his knowledge and contributions are “mycorrhizal” — woven within and about the roots of modern science and mycology, nourishing and helping mycologists and mycological understanding grow.

Ninety years after Atkinson’s death, his collection was in trouble. The collection, held at the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium, had never been indexed. Acidic paper sleeves endangered his glass and nitrocellulose negatives; some specimens were housed in damaged packets; his field journals and notes were fading. Work to restore and digitize Atkinson’s collection started in Summer 2010 with support from the National Science Foundation. Two students were quickly hired to start entering data and scanning photographs. I was hired shortly thereafter to lead the project. To date we’ve employed over 20 students, and refined and streamlined our methods. Now, thousands of photographs and data for tens of thousands of specimens have been digitized in a bustling lab with five data-entry stations. With the help of CUP’s Curator Scott LaGreca, students are learning to spot which specimens need repair and how to do it. Data entry for fungi that Atkinson collected close to home in upstate New York is now complete, and roughly half of his other collections are finished. Thousands of Atkinson’s photographs are a work in progress. New sleeves and labels must be made for his ancient glass negatives, Atkinson’s notes will be digitized, and repairs are ongoing, but the students, our most valuable resource, are making great headway. Specimens, notes, and photographs will be linked in exciting new ways and our data will be made available online. By the end of the project we will have secured Atkinson’s legacy for future generations.

Atkinson died before his time, without completing the great monographic series he planned on North American mushrooms. Still, he brought us new ways of looking at fungi, through the lens of a camera, through research papers, and through the generations of new mycologists he inspired. Thanks to the NSF and our hard-working team at CUP, Atkinson’s collections will be repaired, highly organized, and digitized. His data may help form a snapshot of mycological diversity 100 years ago, shedding light on the impacts of time and climate change on fungal populations. Atkinson may not have dreamed of his collection being used or shared in such a way, but given his spirit for discovery, I think he would have approved.

The Lichens of Tower Road

A post contributed by Scott LaGreca, our new Curator at the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium.

When I graduated from Cornell in 1991, I left Ithaca knowing only one lichen: Flavoparmelia caperata (Common Greenshield Lichen), a dead-common species that I’d collected from a tree near my dormitory. I’ve since become a fully-fledged Ph.D. Lichenologist, and have had the privilege of working in some of the biggest and best herbaria in the world. I now know nearly all of our northeastern North American lichens on sight.

The other day, while walking along the main east-west route on central campus (Tower Road), I was pleased to be able to name no fewer than eleven different lichen species on the oak trees that line the north side of the road— ten more than I was able to 20 years ago! Here is my preliminary species list:

• Amandinea punctata (Tiny Button lichen)
• Candelaria concolor (Candleflame lichen)
• Candelariella efflorescens (Powdery Goldspeck lichen)
• Flavoparmelia caperata (Common Greenshield lichen)
• Flavopunctelia soredica (Powder-edged Speckled Greenshield lichen)
• Ochrolechia arborea (Powdery Saucer lichen)
• Parmelia sulcata (Hammered Shield lichen)
• Parmeliopsis capitata? (Powder-tipped Starburst lichen)
• Phaeophyscia pusilloides (Pompom-tipped Shadow lichen)
• Physcia millegrana (Mealy Rosette lichen)
• Punctelia rudecta (Rough Speckled Shield lichen)

My surveying strategy was casual, but similar to the standard survey methods used by lichenologists who use lichen species diversity as a measure of air quality: I assessed the diversity of lichens on various trees of the same species (in this case, red oak: Quercus rubra) and of roughly the same size (dbh, or diameter at breast height). Using lichen species diversity as a measure of air quality is common in Europe (especially the UK), because European lichenologists have developed lists of lichen “indicator species” —i.e., lists of lichen species that are especially sensitive to air pollution vs. lists of lichen species that are especially tolerant. In general, the further the distance from a “point source”of pollution (like a paper mill, or a smelting plant), the higher the lichen diversity, when measured on trees of the same species of tree and roughly the same dbh. Lists of indicator species, of course, are entirely dependent on geography and latitude. In other words, the same lichen species will not be found here in North America, so lists of European lichen indicator species are of no use here. Once somebody on this side of the Atlantic does the necessary work to develop North American lichen bioindicators, we’ll be able to perform the same sorts of air quality assessments here.

Even without well-developed lists of indicator lichen species, however, I can make two general conclusions about the air quality in the vicinity of Tower Road based on my species list:

1. All the lichen species that I found are common street-tree lichens in many cities in the northeast, and some (F. caperata, P. sulcata, P. millegrana, P. rudecta) are known to be pollution-tolerant in Europe. In addition, all of the species are either foliose (flat; leafy) or crustose (crusty; immersed in their substrate)–none are fruticose (shrubby). [Fruticose lichens are, in general, more sensitive to air pollution than foliose and crustose species.] I would conclude, therefore, that the air quality on Tower Road is not very good.
2. Two of the lichens I found, Candelaria concolor and Physcia millegrana, prefer high nitrogen environments, at least in Europe. Both species, in both Europe and North America, are commonly found on roadsides (where they enjoy high emissions of NOx compounds from vehicles) and near agricultural areas (fields, pastures, and barnyards). So I would conclude from this that the air in the vicinity of Tower Road has an above-average concentration of nitrogen-containing compounds.

My conclusions may not be entirely accurate; the picture may not be so grim! After all, the Air Quality Act was passed in the United States in 1967, and studies have shown that our air quality in the northeast has increased steadily since that time. Modern emissions controls on motor vehicles have further reduced atmospheric pollutants. It takes many years, however, for precipitated atmospheric pollutants to wash away from tree bark. In other words, it may take a while for the lichen flora to recover, even though air quality has increased dramatically. To be truly sure, we’d need to precisely measure air quality, with a machine, to determine exactly what’s happening with regards to air quality vs. lichen diversity along Tower Road.

Another interesting observation–one not having to do with air quality–is the apparent, gradual replacement of Flavoparmelia caperata by the very similar-looking Flavopunctelia soredica on the Tower Road oak trees (the latter is the main lichen flowing down the trunk in our photo). Former CUP curator Bob Dirig has been tracking this phenomenon throughout the Finger Lakes, and other parts of New York. It’s not clear what may be causing this— but it certainly merits closer inspection.

I look forward to doing more field work, and discovering more about Ithaca’s lichens, once the weather warms up again. Meanwhile, you can find me indoors, in the safety and warmth of my microscope lamp!

Explore your world with tape

The Friday Afternoon Mycologist turns to tape in a sticky situation.

Some people put tape on their teeth, hoping to make them pearly white. Others rip tape from their skin, hoping to remove offending blackheads and dead skin cells. A world without tape would be like a world without fungi: a much less sticky place.

This is the true story of how I became the Friday Afternoon Mycologist.

The phone rang, and the caller identified himself as someone with official responsibility for controlling the passage of questionable substances across international borders. The unionized workers responsible for inspecting such items were refusing to inspect an automobile that was covered with mould. Was it safe?

Phone calls like this seem like obvious jokes, especially late in the afternoon. Could it be your old college roommate or that joker down the hall? Once — this is also true — I received a Friday afternoon call from someone claiming to work for ‘The X-Files,’ looking for a culture of mutant wheat rust to use the next day for a scene. I explained that wheat rust did not grow in agar culture, and suggested they should rewrite the script for scientific accuracy. When the program finally aired, Scully pulled a Petri dish from the refrigerator and, without making a slide, looked through her miracle-microscope, revealing that all plants in the San Bernadino Valley had been killed by the spores of an Agaricus mushroom the producers had bought at a grocery store.

The man with the mouldy car needed an answer fast. It was not a matter of the tax value of the mould or the car, just that law required that the car be inspected. The unionists being unwilling, he would enter the car himself. What should he do? I had a vision of him removing the entire seat and hauling it to my lab, and then me trying to flatten it so it could be stored in our herbarium. But instead, I told him:

1. Get some clear cellotape, not the ‘invisible’ present-wrapping kind, but the glassy clear kind.
2. Take a piece of tape 1-2 cm long. Press the sticky side of the tape firmly against the mould colony.
3. Gently place the tape on something clean, something that the tape can be easily removed from, like a credit card or a piece of plexiglass.
4. Bring it to me.

It was Friday afternoon, just after lunch, when he showed up. He had photos of the mouldy automobile. The car was an expensive model with leather seats. It had been enclosed in a shipping container in a warm, humid tropical country, then transported half way around the world to this much colder country, resulting in a lot of condensation and thus a lot of mould. Moulds like condensation. If we were to hold a mycological election, and the main campaign issue was dampness and mist, and moulds were the voters, it would be a landslide.

I took his tape samples and mounted each on a microscope slide, with a drop of 85% lactic acid mounting fluid underneath the tape, and a drop of the same on top, then a cover glass. When I looked through the microscope, here is what I saw:

Any mycologist worth his or her immersion oil would recognize this as an Aspergillus. It can cause some alarm, being the generic home of such horrors as A. fumigatus, a leading fungal killer of immunocompromised hospital patients, and A. flavus, source of the nastiest of all natural toxins, aflatoxin, the bane of turkeys everywhere. But the leather seats, the humidity, the shape of the spores all made a convincing story that this was actually the Aspergillus form of a Eurotium species. Eurotium grows on all kinds of things that get wet and then dry out but stay in a humid place… and it really likes leather. I once found it growing on the webbing of my old lacrosse stick in the less-than-ideal archival conditions of my basement. It is also the target of scorn and disgust from military personnel, who find it growing on their tents and leather boots when they participate in tropical adventures. BUT, it is not terribly dangerous, is not a pathogen, does not make many horrible toxins; at worst, it might lead to a lot of sneezing or some asthma.

My client was happy. The car could be released to its esteemed owner, who could decide for himself how to clean it up.

The moral of this story, however, is that you too can use tape to explore your world. House dust, that suspicious fuzz on the couch, mouldy gnomes, the mildewy haze on the garden plants. You need a microscope, of course. Or a friendly neighbourhood mycologist, who probably won’t mind if you knock on his or her door at about 2 o’clock on a lazy Friday afternoon.

Postal conks

This postal post made possible by the US Postal Service, who delivered a most unusual package to your editor, Kathie Hodge.

Life is full of surprises, and some of the best are delivered by the US Post Office. This story began in the usual way—in an argument. I asserted that the post office would have no problem delivering to Lawrence Millman a large artist’s conk (Ganoderma applanatum), adorned with a simple stamp and handed to the nice lady at the local Post Office shack. No way! Larry said, of course the Post Office would never stand for that! We’ll see, I said.

Just between you and me, I’ve had some experience doing this, because Tim Baroni and I both take mycology classes out in the nearby woods, and we sometimes leave territorial messages for each other on Ganodermas. Many animals use Ganodermas for this purpose. Once in a while, to get the last word, I deface one of Tim’s graffitied Ganodermas (right) and mail it to him like a severed finger, as a warning from the Cornell mafia. But Larry knew nothing of this.

I promptly gathered a big Ganoderma, wrote Larry’s mailing address on it, and took it down to the aforementioned postal shack. The postmistress was delighted to see it, and mailed it expertly and swiftly to Larry in Cambridge, MA. Wish I could’ve seen his face! Shortly thereafter, in April, I received the pictured object. Unlike mine, which was a simple conk postcard, Larry’s return mailing was a package containing a secret surprise. More than one, actually… back to that in a bit. I extracted a plug in the base of the thing, revealing an interesting specimen for my herbarium–an envelope containing a chip of the dry rot fungus, Serpula lachrymans. (Another of our arguments had been over whether S. lachrymans actually occurs in North America–I have now conceded). I was, of course, delighted. Delighted to be right about the Post Office being hip and chill, and delighted to find a big conk in my mailbox.

In August I moved into a lovely new house, and shortly thereafter all hell broke loose. I found, halfway up the stairs to the 2nd floor, a horned fungus beetle, Bolitotherus cornutus. These beetles resemble armored tanks with velcro antlers, and they trundle about on old polypores, shoving each other around. One doesn’t typically find them indoors, unless, well… Where could he have come from? My suspicions were confirmed when I found Larry’s Gano-card and shook it. Out tumbled another male beetle. And one by one, over some weeks in a zip-lock bag: five females and three more males. Since April they’d been eating my postal Ganoderma—as larvae—and had finally emerged in August as adult forked fungus beetles.

The males are the forked ones, and the females are forkless, but equally armored. I love how their armor projects over their eyes, front and back. The males use their horns and snouts like bottle-openers to pry up their rivals and pitch them to the ground. You will want to see that ignominy, eh? Here’re cool videos from Vince Formica’s research program at the University of Virginia. In the wee hours these beetles can be found prying each other off prized conks, as in video 2—the longer their horns, the better.

If you’re not up for beetle peeping in the wee hours, you can look for their sign by day: little brown patches on the tops of Ganoderma applanatum conks. These are where the females have scraped a little nest, laid an egg in it, and plastered it lovingly over with, um, frass. It’s hard to find a conk that lacks these, where I live. When they hatch out, the wee larvae feel like tunneling. They either tunnel right into their conk, where they spend their childhood without ever seeing daylight, or they go the other way and pop out into the sun to stroll around for a bit before tunneling in. You might also find them on Fomes fomentarius or other Ganoderma species. The adults can be rather long-lived, and it’s possible to rear them at home (perhaps more intentionally than I did) so that you can see their grub-like larvae and twitchy pupae.

Like some other tenebrionid beetles, these are experts at their “death feint.” Our photographer thought they were dead until he looked through his images and caught them twitching. Under my dissecting scope and lying on their backs, the beetles tucked themselves up like little gadgets, holding their faces in fright. Occasionally, in response to my hot, predatory breath, they’d flip up the tip of their abdomen like a trap door, releasing a squirt of something meant to scare me. Their stink varies with their food source–they are what they eat.³ I wasn’t scared. In this position one can admire the tufty little belly knobs of the males, between their 2nd and 3rd pairs of legs. They use them in their noisy lovemaking, when the male first climbs on his mate backwards, then rubs her firmly enough to make a noise audible from a couple of long human paces away¹. This amorous noisemaking continues for 2 minutes at a go, often over a long period of time, until some secret understanding is reached and they mate.

Charley Eiseman also wrote of his encounters with forked fungus beetles this season. His were mainly out of doors. I’m not sure if Charley ever goes indoors. Have you seen the fine book he wrote with Noah Charney, Tracks and Sign of Insects? Oh my, if you are at all curious about the odd little things you find outdoors, you’d better get a copy.

Forked fungus beetles do have wings tucked away in there, under those crusty elytra. But it seems they seldom fly–in fact nobody had even documented them flying till 1999². No, they prefer to get around via the US Postal Service.

Small Wonder

A guest post from mycologist, author, arctic explorer, and ethnographer Lawrence Millman.

Mycologists nowadays spend too much time writing grant proposals and not enough time lifting up logs. The latter occupation strikes me as so interesting that I can hardly pass a log without wanting to lift it up. And upon lifting up a log, I’ve occasionally found a cyphelloid species called Henningsomyces candidus.

A word about cyphelloid fungi. Their cup or disc-shaped fruiting bodies suggest that they’re discomycetes, but they’re really basidiomycetes or, in the words of mycologist Ian Gibson, “basidiomycete cup fungi.” DNA researchers sometimes refer to them as “reduced agarics,” and reduced they certainly are — most fruiting bodies are no more than a few millimeters in diameter. Yet as if to compensate for their small size, they usually fruit in swarms.

Henningsomyces candidus is so small (1-2 fruiting bodies per mm) that it might be confused with a generic white crust fungus. But get out your hand lens, and you’ll see an array of tubular fruiting bodies with apical pores that resemble sea squirts gone terrestrial. Or perhaps clusters of miniature macaroni. A friend in New Brunswick was even more specific — she compared the fruiting bodies to ziti. With a microscope, you’ll see that each “ziti” (zitum?) has dichophytic hairs around the margin that resemble branches on a tree. You’ll also see fusiform cystidioles, 2 or 4 sterigmate basidia, and subglobose or slightly elliptical spores. If the spores are more than slightly elliptical, you’ve probably peering at a similar species, the scatologically-named Rectipilus fasciculatus, which — MycoKey to the contrary — is not in synonymy with H. candidus.

In the Eastern U.S., H. candidus can be found under hardwood logs (or under the bark of rotting birch logs) as well as under the occasional softwood log, while in the West it commonly grows on ponderosa pine. I usually find it in the spring or early summer rather than in the fall. There are good Henningsomyces years and bad ones. 2011 happens to be a banner Henningsomyces year: between April and early July, I’ve found specimens in Cambridge (MA), on the summit of Mt. Graylock (western MA), near Duluth (MN), and in several different parts of New Brunswick. So start lifting up logs, for the Henningsomyces mycelium might have exhausted itself this year, and you won’t find any specimens at all next year…

Lawrence Millman is the author of the new guidebook Fascinating Fungi of New England (Kollath & Stensaas), which, in addition to a well-rounded cast of big tasty mushrooms, contains many odd and unusual species like the one he describes above. It is written in a charming, convivial style and very beautifully illustrated. You can order autographed copies of the book, lauded by (among others) Gary Lincoff, by contacting the author at: L.Millman@comcast.net

Moldy love song

On microscopy and molds, by Kathie Hodge, your smitten editor.

If you’ve looked through my blog archive, you’ll know that I’m rather biased toward the small. Infatuated might be a better word. I don’t plan to get over it any time soon.

It’s hard to get into small. A while ago I encouraged you to get a good hand lens (like this one). That’s an awfully good start, but perhaps it’s just the beginning? A hand lens might simply reveal to you all the good things you’re missing! Because really, you might want a microscope. Yes, you. And here the learning curve gets a little steeper, because now a whole thicket of questions springs up: which one? which objective lenses? how does one use it? and how to make a good slide? You’ll need to acquire a little know-how to get yourself started, even if you once peered down a microscope in high school. Perhaps your mushroom club offers a microscopy workshop, or you might find such a thing at a foray or at a friendly local school. In any case, it isn’t hard, so why not go for it?

I’m not here to give advice on which microscope you ought to buy, or even how to use one–I’ll send you to Microscopy UK for such advice given joyfully. Michael Kuo provides some microscopy advice too, more specifically about fungi. I’m not a good microscope recommender because I’m horribly spoiled: my everyday compound microscope is a monster of a Nikon that’s not for every budget. I’ll give you a few tips in an addendum below though, and some moral support, and also some enthusiastic advice on what to see. Like the silly spores of a Pestalotiopsis (right) found on a dead bug. Or the beautiful multicellular spores of a log-dwelling Berkleasium: so big you can see them with a good hand lens. They are even better under a microscope, of course (see below). You might also hunt for starry spores in streams, or spelunk in your cupboards for moldy food…

Lastly, one ring to rule them all: You’ll need a good book. Until recently, this was tricky if you liked molds, since there were few current and comprehensive books to recommend, but now there is a new sacred text, The Genera of Hyphomycetes (2011) by Keith Seifert, Gareth Morgan-Jones, Walter Gams, and Bryce Kendrick (CBS Biodiversity Series). It’s not cheap, but it IS cheap for its size (7.25 pounds, 997 pages), its scope, and its remarkable illustrations [page previews here]. You can buy it here [at CBS in the Netherlands] or here [via APS Press in North America]. This is that game-changing kind of book that provides an exhaustive synthesis and review while opening the field to new learners. You can identify the diversity of molds to genus here–that should keep you busy. And then this book will point you to the right literature to ID them to species. It’s astonishing, and I’d like to congratulate the moldy authors–and I mean that in the best way– who are hopefully lying back in their hammocks after this stupendously successful effort.

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A few more things microscopical

When I say Microscope I mean a compound microscope–to see something using such a device you first mount your specimen on a slide, apply a drop of some liquid and a cover slip, and then, ta da!! Now, I also have a dissecting microscope, which is like a big giant hand lens with two eyepieces, but you don’t especially need one of these. If you’re shopping for a compound microscope for molds or mushrooms, you’ll want one with a 100x oil immersion objective, which will give you 1000x magnification (you get an additional 10x from the eyepieces), and some lesser objectives, most often 10x and 40x. You need that kind of 1000x power to see and measure mold spores. To give yourself a sense of scale, check out this awesome website, which zooms in from coffee beans to… teensy. Note the token fungus (baker’s yeast) on your way in–a yeast cell is about the smallest thing we can see well with a typical compound microscope. Here’s a little tutorial from the University of Wisconsin at Madison about how a standard student scope works. There must be other tutorials out there. Perhaps someone can recommend one that is instructive and yet compelling for novices?

Moldy bread is cool

A kitchen dispatch from a Cornell grad student and sandwich-maker in my mushrooms class.

One day last week I decided to make myself a sandwich for lunch. I grabbed the mustard, turkey, cheese and lettuce from the fridge, and then proceeded to the cupboard to get my hearty, whole-wheat, pre-sliced bread. What I found next has likely been experienced by nearly everyone: Bread mold!

We’ve all seen it — that purple-grey, almost greenish fuzz that slowly takes over our various bread products just short of their expiration date. That fuzzy mold is Rhizopus stolonifer, from the fungal order Mucorales. Rhizopus can also grow on and steal nutrients from other foods in your house, including an array of fruits and vegetables (see our strawberries horror movie). As it turns dark, its spores are released into the air where they float to their next prey, making this mold a bit of a household menace.

Time lapse video of a tasty bagel inoculated with the evil mold Rhizopus stolonifer by Kent Loeffler. If your bagel looks like this, please don’t eat it…

Although in our daily lives we usually only think about the Rhizopus eating our foods, other species of Rhizopus can cause disease in various commercial crops, while still others are used for making tempeh and certain alcoholic beverages. Rhizopus species are very common molds in human environments, and can contribute to sick building syndrome. We are exposed to their spores all the time, and normally Rhizopus species do not infect people, but those whose immune systems are compromised are more vulnerable to zygomycosis as a result of exposure to the mold. Zygomycosis is a very grave fungal infection that causes rapid tissue death around the point of infection –- whether your immune system is hale or not, avoid breathing the spores of molds, including Rhizopus.

The coolest thing about Rhizopus microsporus lies buried inside its cells -– bacteria from the genus Burkholderia live inside the fungal hyphae and spores. Many fungi harbor bacteria on their surface, and some others inside their cells, often in mutually beneficial symbiotic (living together) relationships, but little is known about why these relationships exist. In the case of Rhizopus microsporus and its Burkholderia, however, a research group in Germany has recently made a fascinating discovery: the endobacteria actually make the toxins that the fungus uses to attack plants!

The toxins rhizoxin and rhizonin are most commonly associated with a disease called Rice Seedling Blight. Blight is a generic name for a disease that leads to rapid browning and shriveling of plant tissues, and the eventual death of the plant. In this case it’s caused by Rhizopus microsporus invading rice seedlings. For years plant pathologists (scientists who study plant diseases) have been trying to figure out just how Rhizopus produces its toxins. Their hope has been that by identifying the source of the toxins they will be able to develop a targeted method for stopping their production.

The researchers expected that these toxins were mycotoxins –- produced by the fungus (myco) –- but were surprised to find that if they removed the bacteria from the Rhizopus, then poof! No more toxin production! What’s even more fascinating is that these bacteria control the reproduction of the Rhizopus. Stripped of its endobacteria, Rhizopus microsporus struggled to produce asexual spores, which account for the greenish black color of the mold, and serve as the fungus’s primary method of propagation.

So let’s just eliminate all of those pesky Burkholderia to stop the Rhizopus from eating our rice! This sounds all fine and good except for two major caveats: at this point targeting the endobacteria is not much simpler than targeting the fungus, and not all Rhizopus strains have these Burkholderia bacteria inside of them. This whole story has just emerged over the past few years, and we clearly have more to discover about the partnership between Rhizopus microsporus and its bacterial pal.

Rice Seedling Blight is of tremendous concern in countries that rely on rice as a primary cash crop–and for the rest of us, since rice accounts for about 20% of calories consumed by people around the world. Understanding how these toxins are produced is an important step towards combating plant disease, economic loss, and hunger. For me, however, when I see my bread mold, I’m no longer grossed out but instead am reminded of the intricate networks connecting all the kingdoms of life, and of the coolness that is Rhizopus.

Fictional mycology

Kathie Hodge wrote this post, while feeling bemused.

Being a mycologist is pretty weird. Despite the critical importance of fungi to our planetary ecosystem; despite the ubiquity of fungi all around us; despite how remarkably cool they are, a lot of people think fungi are icky and weird, and that I must be icky and weird to find them interesting. I assure you, I am not icky. The more I think about this common attitude toward fungi, the more fired up I get. Tom Bruns, the President of the Mycological Society of America, wrote an article in this month’s issue of Inoculum [PDF file] to remind us: we, the converted, need to tell others why they should care about fungi. Long denizens of the metaphorical and actual dark, fungi deserve some time in the sun.

So ok, being a mycologist is weird, but this week it’s off the charts. That’s because of Paul McEuen’s new thriller, Spiral, which was released March 22, 2011. In the novel, fungi are key players. Sure, the archvillain is a fungus with aspirations to take over the world. But some of the good guys are also fungi, whereas other good guys are Cornell professors. The novel’s partly set here, on the Cornell campus. And last but not least, the female protagonist, Maggie Connor, is a mycologist and Cornell herbarium director who isn’t me, but gosh, isn’t too far off either.

I can’t tell you what a relief it is, once one’s been semi-fictionalized, to find oneself semi-fictionalized in a novel that’s actually good. Along the way, I got to help the author make his fictional fungal villain convincing, and fill in some mycological details. Paul is a Physics professor here at Cornell–a notably gifted professor who specializes in very, very small things and their applications in nanotechnology. He is also a really nice and down-to-earth guy, who doesn’t immediately strike you as someone who can write a gripping torture scene.

In fiction as in life, fungi are sometimes bad guys, and sometimes good guys. Or, as my friend Larry says, maybe there’re no good guys or bad guys, only the eaters and the eaten. It’s harder to love a destroying angel than a bolete, perhaps, but both have their place in the world.

You, my dear readers… you are already fans of fungi, and you might enjoy this book. It’s a page-turner. Like you and I, it finds fungi interesting. And you know, books like this, that play on your fears by exploring the edge between truth and fiction, really make you think about the possibilities, good and bad.

Best of all, Spiral’s getting great reviews. You can read a little more about it here:

• Cornell Chronicle
• New York Times Review
• Wall Street Journal review

Evening glow

A short post from your editor, Kathie Hodge

My mushroom students and I do all kinds of crazy but fun things every Fall. This year we pulled over for a yard full of giant puffballs, a giant Amanita muscaria, and a giant oak bedizened with chicken of the woods. I routinely make my students hoot in the forest (a Cornell tradition that we find more helpful to the lost than mere whistling). Also, I often send them to the conk cupboard. The conk cupboard is a dark space under the stairs where we store conks, brackets, and hunks of rotted trees for teaching purposes. It’s dry and dingy in there, and smells reassuringly of creeping, ancient decrepitude. I can pack about six students in if they’re not too claustrophobic (or too rude). The very highest function of the conk cupboard is as a viewer for bioluminescent fungi. It’s perfect– pitch black when you turn off the lights. Why, I think even Michael Kuo could see a mushroom glow in there.

This Fall we found two fungi that spent time with my students in the conk cupboard: A great harvest of Omphalotus illudens, the sickening orange jack o’lantern mushroom. We also found Panellus stipticus in glorious abundance.

Panellus stipticus is an unassuming fungus by day. It forms waves of soft beige shelves on logs. It isn’t rare at all, just overlooked. If you take a little nibble of it you’ll find it astringent and puckery (spit it out, now)– that’s where its species name comes from. It is a striking beauty by night. Its gills glow under their own power, a property that we’ve discussed before, in Emily’s nice post on bioluminescent fungi. In our handsome movie here you can see its transformation between day and night.

I should say, this is what you’ll see if you live in eastern North America. Though this fungus occurs in Europe and in the Pacific Northwest (at least… where else?), individuals found outside the northeast don’t glow. So sorry!

I have often sent students home with hunks of wood bearing this fungus. If you are prone to wakefulness in the middle of the night, as I am lately, P. stipticus is a great thing to have on your bedside table. Waking up and finding its glow on your nightstand is a sure way to erase the day’s worries, dispel night terrors, and forget that strange clunking in the basement. You’ll need a fresh northeastern specimen–nice pliable fruiting bodies. It’s handy to know that fairly crispy, dry specimens will revive well if you wet them. I run them under the kitchen tap, and wrap them in wet paper towel. When I go to bed, I peel back the paper towel, and leave their hunk of wood sitting damply in a dish until I awake and find them glowing steadfastly beside me.

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