Posts tagged as:

Fungi

The Mushroom that Sleeps with the Fishes

February 19, 2010

NOTE: Correction below.
Well, this brings new meaning to the concept of gilled mushrooms. Scientists have stumbled upon the first mushroom that fruits underwater, as proudly displayed on the cover of this month’s Mycologia. Notice the little bubbles on the outside of the mushroom. On aquatic plants (like the moss to the left), bubbles form because [...]

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The Softer Side of Aspergillus

November 4, 2009

From the Department of More Cool Natural History Videos with Interesting Music, I give you the sexy CGI version of the fungus Aspergillus (ass-per-jill’-us) courtesy of some fine folks in Mother Russia. You may think of this fungus (if you think of it at all) as the scary black bane of your tupperware contents. But in [...]

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Stalking Mushrooms for Science

September 30, 2009

In all the excitement over the ladybugs, I completely forgot to mention I spent the weekend before scouring an undisclosed location for fungi for the 2009 Rocky Mountain National Park Mycoblitz. Citizen science in action!
Our Mycoblitz was the brainchild of past Colorado Mycological Society president Rob Hallock (hi Rob!), but it is an example of an [...]

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Rusty Summer: Some Wet Colorado Crannies in a Dry Late August, Part II

September 5, 2009

When I was young, I used to think that leaves just naturally got spotty and brown as they aged. But after taking plant pathology, I learned those spots you seen on leaves are almost always fungi or insects infesting plants, and careful examination with a hand lens can reveal a whole new little world to [...]

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Lichen, Take Me Away!

August 4, 2009

You may think that if you’ve seen one lichen, you’ve seen them all. Oh, so not so. Yes, many of them do resemble your common leathery grey-green patches plastered on trees like bark band-aids. But there are so many, many more. If you look around, they are everywhere, and they are gorgeous. Today I bring [...]

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Say, Is That a Stinkhorn in Your Pocket . . . ?

June 18, 2009

All right, gentlemen. Show of hands. How many of you would be proud to have a two-inch, foul-smelling, penis-shaped fungus named after you? Really?
Well, Robert Drewes, curator of herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, was certainly pleased as punch. He was the leader of a biodiversity survey to the African islands of Sâo Tomé [...]

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My science lineage on NPR!

April 15, 2009

So most of my friends (and probably most of you here) have figured out I’m a bit, well, extra excited about fungi. Well, the person who planted the spore in my brain (and the person who trained her) hit the airwaves and Interwebz today after Cornell (Alma mater A) published a press release about the [...]

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