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When strawberries go bad

What could be better than succulent fruit, rotting in time lapse? And doesn’t everyone want to know more about the fungi that rot strawberries? These are rhetorical questions.

Protein synthesis in 1971

Hippies, protein synthesis, and Lewis Carroll, mixed together like some weird Jell-O mold. Too fascinating to look away.

Pilobolus and the lungworm

Jack, a student in PLPA 309 wrote this, and isolated the fungus in the time lapse, too. Innocently spreading by mycelial growth, Pilobolus species faithfully secrete their extracellular enzymes, breaking down herbivore dung and recycling its nutrients. Upon maturation, Pilobolus species produce tiny fluid-filled vesicles, atop each of which a spore packet called a sporangium […]

Shaggy Mane Time Lapse

Post and video by the talented Dawn Dailey O’Brien, Plant Pathologist and co-editor of Branching Out Shaggy mane mushrooms are also known as Lawyer’s Wigs. They are white with a cylindrical cap 1-1/4 to 2 inches wide and 1-5/8 to 6 inches high. They get their name from the flat, white scales on the cap […]

A spider’s nightmare

I’m no fan of spiders, but I have to admire them when they are thoroughly dead and covered in fungus. Here are two fungusy spiders in glorious rotation. That’s right, I’m no fan of spiders, but I am definitely a fan of fungi.

Cabbage monstrosities

The things that were once called Fungi but aren’t anymore are legion. Here’s one of them, a little swimmy thing that causes clubroot of cabbage. It gives cabbage monstrously clubbed roots, and as a bonus, acts as a vector for other diseases. Although we love its monstrous cruelty, we have banished it from the kingdom of Fungi. Be gone!

Time lapse stink

Here’s something I know you’ve all been dying to see. A video of one of the most compellingly jaw-dropping spectacles in mycology, condensed from four days of electrifying footage. What you can’t see is the stink, the awesome stink associated with this event. It caused our noble departmental photographer, Kent Loeffler, to vent the noxious, […]

Lemon lapse time rot

Moldy lemons aren’t victims of just any mold–they have their own specific pair of evil parasites. Here a lemon succumbs to one of those evil Penicillium twins, in time lapse.

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