Archive for September, 2009
The fungal disease of bats known as white nose syndrome (WNS) is heading West. According to Sounding the Alarm for Bat Health by Meg Jones: “For now, Wisconsin’s bat population is hale and hearty. But a devastating fungus is racing through cave-dwelling bat populations in eastern states and it’s headed this way. White-nose syndrome has [...]
David Spahr’s book Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada is now available for a MycoRant review. The publisher will send a copy to the reviewer directly. If you are a mycologist at a New England or Eastern Canadian university, or a knowledgeable member of a club from these parts (not including [...]
Tags: books
“Turn your garden into a toadstool-filled wonderland.” Well heck yeah! Perusing the magazine shelf at the library I spotted the cover of Martha Stewart Living. Now normally I would not even notice that mag, but something caught my eye. Mushrooms! Look! On page 54 of the October edition of the magazine there is a short [...]
Among all the web news about fungi, posts about medicinal mushrooms are notably less common than those about just plain old “mushrooms.” Here’s a collection of recent medicinal mushroom mentions found using both Google and Bing (Honestly? Bing isn’t up to speed for my purposes). A Melding of Performance Art and Mycological Culture? It’s a [...]
Tags: cancer, influenza, medicinal mushrooms, mushroom growing
Rob Hallock, PhD, and Gretchen Cheverton have been kind enough to write about their experience at the New Mexico Mycological Society Annual Foray, held in Taos during the latter part of august 2009. And here it is… New Mexico Mycological Society Annual Foray Taos, New Mexico, was really dry this August, but the New Mexico [...]
Tags: Foray, Hallock, New Mexico, NMMS
Researchers in Canada have announced the sequencing of the genome of Grosmannia clavigera, a fungus found in the mouth parts of the mountain pine beetle. According to Fungus genome boosts fight to save North American forests from Nature News: “Mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have eaten their way through vast swathes of western North American [...]
Tags: genomics, Grosmannia, phytopathology, pine beetle
Red yeast rice has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat gastric problems and as an aid to blood circulation. To produce the product, the yeast Monascus purpureus (know something about this fungus? Help improve Wikipedia!), is allowed to colonize cooked rice. Studies indicate that a diet including read yeast rice can contribute [...]
Tags: cholesterol, Monascus, red yeast rice, statins
Thanks to a tip from an Oregonian I had contacted looking to get some inside information on the local matsutake season, I found out about Mushroom Moderators by Kate Ramsayer. An excerpt: “Matsutake mushrooms draw roughly 1,000 people to the woods southwest of La Pine each year. The harvesters, many of whom speak little or [...]
Tags: commercial harvest, matsutake, Oregon
Now this is way cool. A recent comparison of the sound of a Stradivarius violin, and a violin made with “fungus treated” wood, resulted in a clear victory for the fungus! According to Mold-treated violin beats Strad in blind test: Scientist Francis Schwarze of EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, developed [...]
Tags: Physiporinus, Stradivarius, violins, Xylaria
David Spahr, proprietor of Mushroom-Collecting.com, has a new book out on the edible and medicinal mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada. According to Author pens book on mushrooms by Mechele Cooper: “I used to be a photographer so I took my own pictures for the book and started a Web site,” he said. “I [...]
Tags: books, photobucket
Considering that Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis, creators of “Yeast Nation”, previously produced “Urinetown” on Broadway, this new effort doesn’t seem like much of a surprise. “Urinetown” was about an unpleasant future-place where people had to pay to go to the bathroom (sounds kinda’ like a town in Mexico I visited once). An exceprt from [...]
Tags: theater, Yeast Nation
A number of forays have taken place recently (and for some reason did not show up on my radar until after the fact) and many more are upcoming now that cooler Fall weather is arriving around many parts of the Northern hemisphere. This season also seems to bring out reporters who find an interest in [...]
Tags: forays
A recent post at sciencedaily.com, Fungal Map Of Mutations Key To Increasing Enzyme Production For Bioenergy Use, discussed once again the use of Trichoderma reesei as a possible biofuel producer. This time some work at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was mentioned. “We want to understand the path that we’ve taken to high enzyme production [...]
Tags: genomics, JGI, PNNL, Trichoderma
MycoRant received an attempt at a comment yesterday on the Whatever Happened to Cantharellus AB? post. It didn’t look like the usual spam because the only content of the comment was a link to Eric Danell’s CV with the message “read.” Well I had already tried that, and didn’t see anything of note (and still [...]
Tags: Cantharellus AB
(Update 09/010/09 – the book has been claimed. Look for the review soon.) Author Robert Rogers was kind enough to send to MycoRant his book, The Fungal Pharmacy . Subtitled Medicinal Mushrooms of Western Canada, this spiral bound edition contains 230 pages of color photographs and text. Robert has been a student of plant medicine [...]
Tags: books, medicinal mushrooms
Perhaps thirteen is an unlucky number. Maybe the fourteenth deadliest mushroom just isn’t deadly enough. Maybe there is no guarantee that the poster of 13 Deadliest Mushrooms on the Planet knows for sure. None the less, it does stimulate thought. If we were to rank the deadliest mushrooms in order form “most deadly “to “least [...]
Tags: Amanita, poisonous mushrooms
An anonymous person made a post at Ask Metafilter about how to go about getting a doctoral degree in Mycology. It got quit a few interesting responses. The question starts like this: “My husband wants to get a doctorate in mycology become a mycologist. We don’t know where to start. My husband is now starting [...]
Tags: doctorate
It’s official; a mushroom rush will begin on Tuesday, September 8 in the woods of Orgon. Lucrative Matsutake Mushroom Season Opens In Oregon by Ethan Lindsey has the story. “Mushroom hunting season is here. And for residents of Chemult, about an hour south of Bend, the next two months are pretty crazy. Gidget Flanagan: “We [...]
A recent trend in fungal forays is the “mycoblitz.” According to the definition at Mykoweb a mycoblitz is “…a quick, intense survey of the fungal species present.” There will be a mycoblitz in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in mid-September. This will be a followup to an earlier mycoblitz held at the same location in [...]
Tags: Colorado, mycoblitz, Rocky Mountians
A new Yahoo Group, Rocky Mountain Fungi, has just been formed. According to the group landing page: “This group is dedicated to Rocky Mountain Fungi. We hope this board encompasses groups from New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and anywhere else in the Rocky Mountains. It is my hope that people can post what kinds [...]
Tags: mushrooms, Rocky Mountains, Yahoo Groups
