weird
An unlikely delicacy: the basket stinkhorn
This isn’t the first post you’ve seen here about stinkhorns. They’ve just got that special something. In the Western hemisphere, they’re wonderfully disgusting. In the East, they’re wonderfully delicious. Let’s explore.
Ladybug Fungi
They may be taking over the world, but they have problems too: They have an itch they can’t scratch. Their dead wear fur coats. They nuke their competitors with poisonous blood. Multicolored Asian ladybugs are host to three different fungi. They’re all bizarre and interesting, but if you are a ladybug, you will have a clear favorite.
The Cornell Hoot
On the origins and practice of the Cornell Hoot, a mycological finding tool. Executing the Cornell Hoot is sure to make you find more mushrooms, grow more hair, make more friends (of a certain kind), and stay safely found.
Azalea divinity
Sure, azaleas have pretty flowers. But who says gardens have to be about pretty flowers and tasty fruit? Cornell has one garden devoted to poisonous plants, and any mycologist-gardener might cherish a bed of rusty plants, smutted grasses, and these fantastic fungus-induced “apples.”
Mammoth Poo Fungi
Woolly mammoths have been extinct in North America for 13,000 years. What caused their extinction, and what did they eat for a snack? These two questions are related to each other only by… Fungi! Also, bonus! we explore the many words for poo.
Flying salt shakers of death
Poetry and dirt inspired Angie Macias to explore buzzy, hummy cicadas. And the fungi that live to eat them. They are butt-devouring species of the fungus Massospora– coming to your backyard this summer!
ZAP! Lightning, Gods, and Mushrooms
Everyone knows mushrooms pop up after thunderstorms, right? Japanese mushroom farmers sometimes deploy electric shocks to get their shiitake mushrooms to fruit. So, what would happen if you wandered around in the forest zapping the ground?
New Growth: Hairy Homer
In which we grow some hair for Homer Simpson, using Phycomyces blakesleeanus, a whiskery mold. Also, we update you on what’s going on behind the scenes at the Cornell Mushroom Blog.
Explore your world with tape
The man with the mouldy car needed an answer fast. It was not a matter of the tax value of the mould or the car, just that law required that the car be inspected. The unionists being unwilling, he would enter the car himself. What should he do? I had a vision of him removing the entire seat and hauling it to my lab, and then me trying to flatten it so it could be stored in our herbarium. But instead, I told him…