Lemon lapse time rot
Citrus fruits aren’t too easy to decay. They have thick rinds that’re chock full of aromatic essential oils that suppress most fungi. They’re alive, and can activate various defense responses to thwart invaders. Enter Penicillium digitatum, a mold that specializes in Citrus. It’d be hard to get away with saying this one’s lovely, eh? But it has a certain charm, at least in time lapse video. This lemon, which we cruelly inoculated with the mold of doom, took about 7 days to complete its act. Since we lack smell-o-vision, you’ll just have to imagine the stink of a fully rotted lemon. A memorial piece of it now resides in our Herbarium as CUP 067576. You can never have too much rotted citrus in your herbarium.
Quicktime 5+ movie
Time lapse video by Kent Loeffler
DIYers: You may have already done this experiment at home! Buy a lemon that has a water-soaked looking bruise. Take it home, and wait. Chances are good you’ll find either Penicillium digitatum (green rot) or its arch enemy, Penicillium italicum (blue rot). Look out, little lemons!
[…] Perhaps it’s a particular weirdness of plant pathologists to get excited by a good example of disease. However, it’s my private theory that the rest of you might enjoy creepily deformed stuff too. The latest issue (vol. 23) of Cabinet Magazine featured Ellen Birrell’s color photos of mite-infested lemons in full page glory. These mere arthropods can hardly rival a bad case of lemon rot, but you see my point. […]
Trackback from Name that Mushroom.
[…] A lot of people think that a mold is a mold is a mold, but that’s just not so. The mold that’s rotting your lemon is not the same one that’s growing in your maple syrup, or eating your strawberries. In fact, your lemon, maple, and strawberry molds each belong to a different phylum of fungi. Proust said it: The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. […]
At first I was able to run the time lapse photos on the blog, but not lately. I have Quick Time on my computer. Is this something I am doing wrong, or does the blog page need to be tweaked?
[…] Cornell Mushroom Blog « Furia ithacensis […]
Cool, thanks for the info. I am an (art) photographer and I did a yearlong project on rotting/moldy lemons called The Lemon Tree Project: Abundance and Decay that you can see on my wesbite. Now I know that some of the mold in my photographed lemons is likely Penicillium digitatum (green rot) or Penicillium italicum (blue rot).
PS The photography project can be seen here: http://lienavayzman.com/section/74051_Lemon_Tree_Project.html I am interested in art/science conversations and collaboration. If any of you want to try to identify the molds in the pictures, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts (via the Contact feature on my site). Thanks!