fungi
Small friends of fungi
An homage to the Little Things that run the world. Oh how we love them in all their unplumbed diversity! Here is a thoughtful reminder of the roles of the small and oft-overlooked members of the Dead Plants Society, courtesy of our many-legged guest, Bob Mesibov.
Paleomycology: Discovering the fungal contemporaries of dinosaurs
Fungi tend to be small, soft, and ephemeral — properties that don’t exactly help establish a strong presence in the fossil record. But they certainly have been around for a long time (perhaps 4 billion years?). Here we explore some of the fungi of the distant past, including some molds preserved perfectly in amber for tens of millions of years.
Beneath Notice
Our new book is now available! It’s a self-published catalog of our last two years of art shows, which featured the use of a borescope to get up close and personal with small fungi. The borescope gives a fabulous, bug’s eye view of small things in the field, at a scale more fitting to their small majesty than a squinty hand lens or a sober microscope. We think you’ll like the book.
Homeward Bound: Fungi of China
The Fungi of China collection at the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium has a poignant history. Rescued from destruction during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, many of its fragile specimens traveled by oxcart and by ship to the US, where we have been safeguarding them for about 70 years. Now we’ve divided them and will be sending the new duplicates back to the Herbarium of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is our gift to the people of China.
Entomophaga maimaiga – The caterpillar killer
Since we’d rather not let gypsy moth caterpillars eat the leaves off entire forests, we’re pretty happy about Entomophaga maimaiga, a fungus that attacks them. In this post we take a close-up, time lapse look at the devouring of a caterpillar by a fungus that is an effective agent of biological control.
Shots from the archive: puffball lad
We’ve got some impressive collections of old photographs here at Cornell. At the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium, we have 60,000 or so. Our images are of fungi, plant disease, agricultural methods, plus mycologists and plant pathologists. You can browse a subset of our images online. Some would make good quirky art to hang in your apartment (try an archive search on ginseng, or potato)…
borescopic mycology
We’re so excited about small things, we devised a whole new way to look at them. ‘Beneath Notice’ was our 2009 art show, which hung at Mann Library’s 2nd floor gallery Jan 12 – Feb 27. It featured Kent Loeffler’s stupendous photographs of fungi, all taken with a borescope. This allows us to get all up close and personal with mushrooms and less-often-seen tiny fungi. As if that wasn’t enough, the photos were annotated with fungal outbursts by Kathie Hodge, and Kent’s famous time lapse videos were running on nearby hi-def monitors. Missed the show? Buy the catalog.
Eulogy for a lost dog
Our guest Tami Mungenast shares the moving story of her dog Shiloh, who died of mushroom poisoning in 2008. Yes, dogs are just as susceptible to poisonous mushrooms as people–in Shiloh’s case a brown Galerina sp. in her yard was the culprit. Warning! Sad.
Fungi on Science Friday!
Eyes tired from too much reading? Use your ears for a change to listen to Science Friday do fungi in a radio show called “Fungi: the good, the bad, and the edible.” The show features your humble editor, Kathie Hodge, along with mycologist and author David Fischer, and guests Kelli Hoover and Arturo Casadevall. We field calls about everything from foxfire to species concepts and the extraterrestrial origins of fungi(!).