Archive for December, 2009
Andy Isaacson of Mother Jones has written an in-depth article discussing a wide range of work, including a significant amount of biographical background, involving Paul Stamets of Fungi Perfecti.
The Search for an Endangered Mushroom That Could Cure Smallpox, TB and Bird Flu begins aboard a boat. (Note: It’s a five page article but this link [...]
Tags: agarikon, medicinal mushrooms, Stamets
Every household needs a few wooden mushrooms to spruce up a bookshelf, awesomize a nick-knack display, or just to leave laying around someplace. Lots of places sell wood-turned mushrooms. Here are three guys who show how to turn some yourself on a wood lathe.
Turning a Mushroom
This is a tutorial illustrated with photos from woodworker Larry [...]
Tags: crafts, turned mushroom, wooden mushroom
Emily Dennis reports in Rare fungus rediscovered in Suffolk, on the appearance of a seldom seen fungus. Seldom seen at least in Suffolk (UK):
A rare fungus has returned to Suffolk having vanished for nearly 10 years. The bearded tooth fungus is a scarce species which had been known at RSPB Minsmere since 1990, but had [...]
Tags: bearded tooth fungus, Hericium erinaceus, UK
Anyone who has had the slightest interest in mushrooms over the years no doubt knows of the theories connecting aspects of the Christmas tradition with Amanita muscaria. I figure today is as good a day as any to make mention of it.
How credible are these theories? Well, reasonably so in my opinion, although it is [...]
Tags: Amanita muscaria, Christmas, ethnomycology
I’m still working out exactly which license is applicable but I am pleased to announce that MycoRant is now published under a creative commons (CC) share and share-alike license.
I have never claimed anything on MycoRant was copyrighted (didn’t need to according to the law) but I hadn’t given it much thought until I asked another [...]
Tags: copyright, Creative Commons
A mycologist doing field work on the grounds of an observatory in British Columbia has collected a specimen of Squamanita paradoxa. It is believed that this is the first known example of this unusual-looking parasitic basidiomycete in Canada. From an article with the stunningly original title A rare fungus found among us by Judith Lavoie:
An [...]
Tags: Canada, Squamanita
Holy Smokes! A Chinese farmer by the name of Li Qingli has developed a mushroom growing method that produces massive clusters of fruit bodies. The technique seems simple–give them plenty of space. It sure seems to work judging by the photos at Giant Fungi. According to that news post the clusters weight in at 10-20 [...]
Tags: China, mushroom growing
Mycodiesel. It has a nice ring to it. It was about a year ago that a flurry of buzz surrounded the publication of a paper announcing the fungal synthesis of fuel-like organic molecules from a species isolated from Patagonian trees. The work was led by Gary Strobel of Montana State University.
Now the National Science Foundation [...]
Tags: Gliocladium, Montana State University, mycodiesel, Strobel
Remember some time ago when a couple of graduates from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute introduced their idea of making a mycelium-based construction material with insulating properties? They went on to form a company called Evocative Design and that that product is called Greensulate.
Well, they are at it again. This time they have a mushroom-based product called [...]
Tags: Ecocradle, Greensulate, packaging, Rensselaer
Rehabilitation of an abandoned mine waste site in the Philippines has been assisted by inoculating trees with commercial mycorrhizal inoculum. The article Fungi can rehabilitate barren mine waste dumpsite – study by Rudy A. Fernandez appears in The Philippine Star.
The title might be a bit misleading since the fungi aren’t doing the remediation all by [...]
Tags: bioremediation, Mycorrhizae, Philippines
Ohio-based researchers Nicholas P. Money and Mark Fischer have studied the shape of mushroom caps in an effort to understand how close to a perfect shape actual mushrooms are able to achieve. The role of a mushroom cap is to support a spore-bearing hymenium.
In the case of your regular garden variety mushroom the hymenium exists [...]
Tags: basidiocarps, biological modelling, Mark Fischer, mushroom caps, Nicholas P. Money
I finally found a polling plugin that seems to work. It doesn’t look good on the sidebar though, so I am still limited to putting the poll in a post (I don’t want an ugly sidebar!).
Speaking of polls, I think most polls are a stupid waste of time. Especially the one’s you see at places [...]
The do it yourself (DIY) movement has really taken off in recent years. Along with that, there has been an explosion of material on the web for how to do all kinds of stuff to save money, impress your friends, and just have fun doing something kinda’ cool.
Although the Instructables page has been up for [...]
Tags: instructables
What the?…
The town board of Litchfield, Connecticut, has banned the tying of yellow ribbons around city trees in support of soldiers. For one thing, they don’t want to set a precedent for other causes and end up with an epidemic of yellow ribbon tying. I’m not sure what the origin of “tying a yellow ribbon [...]
Tags: tree fungus, yellow ribbons
Although there exist some decent instructions on the web for how to make a spore print as an aid to mushroom identification, some people just enjoy making them and consider them sort of an art form in and of itself. Anyone who has ever made one has surely recognized their intrinsic beauty. In fact, every [...]
Tags: art, crafts, mushrooms, spore prints
Thanks again to a reader tip we have some cute (and simple) mushroom ornaments made of felt. These come courtesy of Craft magazine (free!). While I was at it, I snooped around the Craft site, as well as the sister site Make, to see if they had any other fungal stuff, and it turns out [...]
Tags: crafts, crochet, knitting, paper mushrooms
You’d think the methods and techniques for growing button mushrooms commercially would have been pretty well worked out by now. This is probably true with respect to the actual growing process, but there are no doubt still improvements to make in materials, construction, and facility design. From the Associated Press, Sprouting High-Tech Mushrooms In Maryland [...]
Tags: mushroom growing
According to The Priciest Foods Ever… And Why Expensive Foods Cost So Much, the white truffle is the world’s most expensive food.
More expensive than any other food, let alone any other fungus, the white truffle stands at the top of the expensive-food chain. These gems are so expensive because of their rarity and because truffle [...]
