not fungi
Beware! The Slime Mold!
Our intrepid reporter studies the science behind the movie, The Blob, debunking Dr. Meddow’s longstanding theory that The Blob is a mutant bacterium from outer space. Warning: this post contains actual ooze, plus a song that, if you get it in your head, will haunt you for days.
Bioblitz Final Report
An update from your editor, Kathie Hodge
Classes have just ended here and it is the time of final reports, term papers, assignments. For my part, I’d like to tell you about our bioblitz results.
We had about 46 participants (a handful of them kids). I asked each person to estimate how many species we might [...]
Getting ready for the Bioblitz
An update from Kathie
Tomorrow’s the big day. I’m hosting a Bioblitz on a 5 acre patch of land near Ithaca. A pack of roving naturalists, taxonomists, mycologists, and ilk will join me to inventory all the life forms we can find. I’m excited.
And to think that just eleven days ago I was despairing that [...]
First Annual Blogger Bioblitz in Ithaca
An invitation from Kathie
Despite the snowy weekend to come, Spring has come to Ithaca, and Ithacans are itching to get outside. In that spirit, the Cornell Mushroom Blog announces our participation in the First Annual Blogger Bioblitz. Jeremy Bruno of The Voltage Gate conceived the idea, and he challenges science and natural history bloggers to [...]
Something funny in the herbarium
Guest blogger Susan Gruff was Curator of the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium until her retirement in 2007. With over a quarter of a century of daily dealings in the Herbarium, Susan has some stories to tell.
There are thousands upon thousands of interesting specimens contained in the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium. Every now and then, [...]
Protein synthesis in 1971
A video digression from Kathie Hodge, your Editor.
We of the Mushroom Blog are fervent about learning, and we especially admire pedagogical contributions that are bizarre or silly. In that spirit, we offer you this spectacular video interpretation of protein synthesis. You might be thinking I’m off-topic, so let me explain.
Every time we here at [...]
A tribute to Carl Sagan
by Kathie Hodge
Carl Sagan died ten years ago today. In his honor, the blogosphere, a strangely cohesive and disparate universe, brings you the Sagan blog-a-thon. Kudos to Joel Schlosberg for initiating this–here is his meta-post that compiles all the other Sagan tributes posted today.
I overlapped Professor Sagan here at Cornell by a few years, [...]
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!