Fungus Among Us: Skirted Stinkhorn.

Since the power outage unfortunately cut our fungus week short, here's what I would have done if the power hadn't gone out. Yes, I know, we already did a stinkhorn, but this stinkhorn is a little more eerie.

More here.

Perhaps this would have been a little more appropriate for Halloween, but the skirted stinkhorn (Phallus indusiatus) is the quintessential "weird mushroom." It's identifiable as a mushroom, but looks like it was laced with cobwebs or the skirt of a ghost. Every tropical region in the world has this thing. It's that one mushroom that people photograph and demand to know what it is. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

P. indusiatus has a very distinctive 'skirt' of lacy indusium- the stuff beneath the cap on this mushroom. As in the basket stinkhorn, this mushroom uses its scent and presumably holes to help spread its spores around. Again, the spores are stored in a sticky fluid called gleba as opposed to being airborne. Is it just me, or do all stinkhorns sound like something out of alien movies?

Unlike the other stinkhorn we covered, yes, this baby is edible. It was a rarity in Qing dynasty cuisine for a long time. The notorious Empress Dowager Cixi had a particular fondness for skirted stinkhorn, and Henry Kissinger got a taste of it as well. It has been successfully cultivated in China since 1979. It is now sold commonly in Asian markets, so if you're curious, take a look there.

Along with actually being edible, P. indusiatus has a few compounds in it that may prove useful. One, hydrxylmethylfurfural, could prevent browning in commercial food. Extracts are antioxidants and antibiotics. There is almost nothing bad about this mushroom...except that it might be an alien spore. Quick, run!

Fungus Among Us: Honey Fungus.

(Stupid thing didn't publish. I don't know why, but it didn't at first.) 

Welp, the power came on right after we went out to get a generator. Fancy that.  Looks like I get to continue with Fungus Among Us, which could be good for some of you and downright terrifying for others. Without further ado, let us look at today's terrifying...jaw-dropping...

Aww, aren't they cute? I mean, cute for mushrooms. They're called "honey mushrooms" due to the color, and Armillaria solidipes  otherwise. They are found throughout the northern hemisphere, particularly in the Pacific northwest. They loooove feeding on pine trees and have their own blight.

Let's be honest, here: These are not impressive-looking mushrooms. They're cute and yellow. Yes, they feed on wood like many a fungus.  On the plus side, they're safe for work.

Thing is, remember: Those mushrooms are only the fruiting bodies. It's impossible to judge the size of the whole fungus by the size of what are effectively its genitalia. While we humans tend to judge 'size' based on junk, this is an extremely poor way to gauge the size of an organism that has most of its body underground. Big mushrooms do not make a big fungal organism. In fact...

Somewhere in this forest is a HUGE mushoom.

...those tiny little mushrooms? They belong to the single largest, and possibly longest-lived, organism in the world. Forget the blue whale; if a mass of these things in Malheur National Forest,  Oregon are indeed one organism, it spans 2,000+ acres. We aren't even going to try and weigh that. Again, if it is indeed one organism, it is also 2,400 years old, making even tuataras and Galapagos tortoises whippersnappers by comparison. It only got that huge because there was very little competition for land and resources.

Do not, however, try this at home. Outside of being crazy and massive, these mushrooms are dangerous to trees -  Douglas firs in particular. They can remain on a tree for up to 50 years and are very, very hard to remove entirely. Please to not be trying to make a Guinness Record out of this.

Fungus Among Us: Athlete's Foot.

Today's entry has to be one of the least glamorous ever. Really, we've done the majestic bald eagle, cool big cats, and giant blue iguanas...but athlete's foot? This has to be a new low for the blog. That's coming from the woman who finds tapeworms kinda cute.

Actually, I find athlete's foot fascinating in the same way I find pigeons fascinating. Athlete's foot is one of those mundane things that we take for granted. I'm sure people still consider fungi gross, but isn't it at least somewhat impressive that one has evolved seemingly specifically to invade our bathing spaces?

Yes, athlete's foot is caused by a fungus. Also called tinea pedis, it's usually the work of Trichtophyton rubrum or T. mentagrophytes. It thrives in dark, moist areas and is spread in places where people go barefoot, such as gym lockers and For whatever reason, it prefers the crevice between toes 4 and 5 on most individuals. Who knew a fungus could be so picky?

Athlete's foot manifests itself as a rapid peeling of the skin on the bottom of one's foot. It's more of an annoyance than truly painful unless you obsessively peel away the skin. Most of the time, you know athlete's foot when you see it. It itches like crazy, but has a million easily-accessible cures to prevent you from clawing your feet red. If you haven't encountered it yet, you have never been in a gym.

Do NOT pick on athlete's foot. I know it's tempting.

Usually, athlete's foot is nothing to worry about. There are plenty of over-the-counter remedies and  If left untreated, however, it can lead to the exposure of raw skin and bleeding. Such cuts open the way for more severe bacterial infections. Athlete's foot can also spread to the crotch, by the way, but "athlete's groin" is so unceremonious that we have to call it "tinea cruris."

Never badmouth a fungus that can attack your crotch. You never know when it might be listening. 

Fungus Among Us/"They Actually Eat That:" Mycoprotein.

Lately, there are just so many reasons to go vegan: cows contribute to global warming; meat is expensive; oh gods, factory farms are horrific.  There are so many reasons to not eat meat that it makes one wonder what else there is. Well, this is a fungus week; you can probably guess that mushrooms are on the list.

Fungi have been used as meat subs since vegetarianism was a thing. Even outside of being marketed as a meat substitute, large mushrooms are sometimes used as a "meat" in sandwiches due to their texture. Mycoprotein, however, is even more blatanly a meat sub.  It is marketed as Quorn in the U.S. and Europe because, y'know, long Greek names just don't sell. 

Mycoprotein comes from the filamentous fungus Fusarium venenatum. It was first discovered in Buckinghamshire, Britain in 1967. The high-protein fungus was officially approved for human consumption in 1985. Since then, it has been in our grocery stores - not only as a meat sub, but also as a sub for fat in dairy and or actual grain in cereal. Yep, even the meat subs are using 'shrooms.

Wrong species, same basic idea, here.

Mycoprotein was originally developed to combat food shortages that would arise from a booming population. F. venenatum's fibers are roughly the same length and width as animal protein, however, and thus is a feasible meat substitute. Now it joins tofu and various nuts as being a "meat"  for people who don't like the idea of hurting animals.

Before you ask: Yes, some people do have allergies to mycoprotein. Fusarium species have been found to contaminate food to the point where it was touted as an herbicide in the past.  If you're sensitive to mold, be wary. For the record, I'm allergic to penicillin, and I've had no problems aside from it kinda tasting funny. If this is what we'll be stuck eating at the end of the world, you'll probably be able to handle it.

Fungus Among Us: Basket Stinkhorns.

Still don't think fungi can be made into art? Well, sometimes, nature decides to do the work for us. There are some fungi that look like pieces from a modern art museum, only alive and spontaneously making the landscape a little weirder.

Stinkhorns, particularly those in the Clathus genus, resemble some sort of weird, alien art. Most of the time, they just look strangely like mammalian genitalia. Clathrus ruber, however, has a fruiting body that is bright red and would not look out of place in a museum of modern art. It is also called the basket stinkhorn. Although originally native to Europe, it has since spread to every continent bar Antarctica.

In the case of basket stinkhorns, you guessed it, the fruiting body looks like a basket. It starts looking like a sort of egg on the ground, but blossoms into the strange, netlike structure after some time. Like something out of a sci-fi story, a greenish, spore-filled goop called "gleba "coats the inside of this structure with spores. Just about the only thing creepier would be an alien fetus resting within that net.

Wait, no. There is something creepier than an alien fetus in that net. As the name 'stinkhorn' might indicate, this fungus reeks of rotten meat. This scent, combined with the latticed structure and bright colors, lures flies into the cage to help spread the spores. Luckily, this only lasts 24 hours after the 'egg' ruptures, so threat of a massive alien invasion are unlikely. The coming of the Lord of the Flies is another story.

For centuries, there have been superstitions about simply touching this fungus leading to illness. It's called "witch's heart" in Yugoslavia. Nobody knows if it's really edible or not; the eggs might be, but the one person who was daring enough to try a 'blossomed' basket wound up getting sick. Something that smells like rotten meat would probably not be good to eat by the smell alone; China's tried anyways.

But is it art? 

Bio-Art/Fungus Among Us: Mold Garden.

Yes, it's that time of the month. No, it's not werewolf or PMS time - it's Theme Week time! This week's theme is FUNGI, mostly because they get very little press on this blog. It's a shame; they happen to be fascinating plant...animal...things. Yeah, fungi are fungi, sorry. They're their own thing.

So what makes a fungus a fungus? It's almost like a plant...but not. Fungi reproduce by spores, lack chlorophyll, and have cell walls toughened by chitin - a common polymer also found in the shells of insects and crustaceans. They usually feed on decaying matter, but some have amazing symbiotic relationships with plants and animals. The only part of the fungus we usually see are the fruiting bodies - yes, those giant portobello mushrooms are mushroom naughty bits. You're welcome. 

CENSOR IT!!

Fungi are everywhere. Open your refrigerator, for example. If something has started turning fuzzy, that's a fungus.Athlete's foot? That's a fungus, too. Of course, mushrooms are fungi. The yeast used in making bread is a fungus as well. Cheese inevitably contains at least one kind of fungus - sometimes many. Hmm...does that mean that the mushroom sandwich that they used to have at Panera is technically X-rated? Sooo many fruiting bodies.

With fungi being just about everywhere, it's no wonder that people have started making art with them. Some of it is absolutely beautiful and stunning; you'd be amazed how much moldy cream cheese looks like a cosmological phenomenon. Others are just depressing.

My personal favorite among them, however, are Stacy Levy's Mold Garden pieces. Each panel consists of a sandblasted image of an actual mold culture. If that wasn't cool enough, Stacy put real mold on those images to grow. Is this life mimicking art, or art mimicking life? Whatever you call it, it's neat.

Please support the artist here.

Mold: It's not just for science projects anymore.