video
The Future of Fungal Freshness?
What if mushrooms weren’t grown in dank grow rooms by gnomes and elves, but instead grew right in their clever packaging on the way to market? Our student reporter interviews designer Agata Jaworska about her concept ‘Made in Transit,’ presented as her MS thesis at the renowned Dutch nexus, Design Academy Eindhoven.
The Perfect Pitch
This delightful guest post by Moselio Schaechter and Merry Youle explains the mechanism by which mushrooms discharge their spores. You always wanted to know why mushrooms are associated with dank and humid places–this clever water-assisted mechanism is the explanation.
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.
Supermarket Mycology. Flyspeck disease of apples
People get fussy about their apples, and tend to reject them if they’re bruised, or have nasty fungal lesions on them. But flyspeck is a subtle disease, and you’ve probably eaten it many times. I have, and I’m none the worse for it. Here we visit two different apple diseases, flyspeck and sooty blotch, in full rotating glory.
The Dancing Nematode and the Helicospore
Lots of small twisty things, entwined. Some of them are moving. What the heck is going on here?
When strawberries go bad
What could be better than succulent fruit, rotting in time lapse? And doesn’t everyone want to know more about the fungi that rot strawberries? These are rhetorical questions.
Protein synthesis in 1971
Hippies, protein synthesis, and Lewis Carroll, mixed together like some weird Jell-O mold. Too fascinating to look away.
Pilobolus and the lungworm
Pilobolus is interesting enough all by itself, because it can shoot a big black bullet. We’d also like to introduce you to the lungworm. The lungworm takes an unusual route to get back into a cow. It travels through snot, dung, and–most surprisingly–by fungus.
Shaggy Mane Time Lapse
Here’s a time lapse of some shaggy mane mushrooms. They are also called inky caps, and you’ll see why.