The Mushroom Log
With that, Dr. Baroni and two colleagues, Dr. D. Jean Lodge and Dr. Dan Czederpiltz, plunged into the Central American jungle. The three are mycologists--mushroom experts – who spent 10 days in August searching for new species in the mountains of southern Belize.
The ridge they were exploring, Doyle's Delight, is nine miles east of the Guatemalan border and was named for its resemblance to the prehistoric setting of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel "The Lost World.'' Towering palms and strangler figs, their trunks wrapped in a green shag of ferns and mosses, rise and converge in a leafy canopy that keeps the moist forest floor in perpetual dusk. The ridge is so remote that the British Army's jungle training unit dropped the expedition members and a reporter in by helicopter.
There were other researchers on the multinational expedition--a Belizean ornithologist, a British botanist, an American reptile specialist--but the mycologists had the best odds of finding a new species. The British mycologist Dr. David L. Hawksworth, extrapolating from the ratio of fungi to vascular plants (six species of fungi for every plant) in several sets of data, has estimated the existence of 1.5 million species of fungi on earth.
"We've only discovered and named 5 to 10 percent of those," said Dr. Baroni, who is a biology professor at the State University of New York at Cortland. (By contrast, an estimated 90 percent of the world's 300,000 species of flowering plants have already been described.)
Dr. Baroni, Dr. Lodge and two other mycologists not on this trip are in the final year of a four-year survey of tropical fungi in the Caribbean and Central America. So far they've discovered more than 100 new species.
Fungi are neither plants nor animals; they were recognized as their own distinct kingdom only 35 years ago. In 1993, RNA research revealed that fungi are actually more closely related to animals than to plants. Mycologists still can't agree on how many species of fungi have been described--estimates range from 74,000 to 300,000. Meanwhile, new species are added almost daily. Last year one journal, Mycotaxon, published descriptions of 258 new or renamed fungi. From 1980 to 1999, an average of 1,100 new species were found and described every year.
The mycologists find new species by sticking to a workaday schedule, even in the jungle. Here, they spent mornings in the field collecting 20 to 30 specimens each day. In the afternoon they returned to their field lab, a 10-by-10 screen tent, to process their specimens. Each mushroom was measured for size, precisely described, and noted for color. Then it was slowly baked for 24 hours in Dr. Lodge's field oven, a custom-made butane-powered drying rack.
On the first morning at Doyle's Delight, Dr. Baroni didn't get 10 minutes down the trail before coming upon an intriguing specimen of bolete, a mushroom that has pores instead of gills under its cap. He put his face right up to the fungus, then pulled back for a celebratory moment.
"That's outstanding. Yes!" he said, pumping his elbow like Tiger Woods sinking a winning putt. "That's worth the helicopter trip right there."
Dr. Lodge, a United States Forest Service mycologist based in Puerto Rico, calls this "doing the fungi dance."
Their prey are small, fragile and sometimes hidden, so fungi hunters spend a lot of time on their hands and knees. "The tree guys, they'll get a couple kilometers down the trail," said Dr. Baroni. "Some days we won't get out of earshot of camp."
Despite outfits worthy of Indiana Jones, fungi hunters expect little glamour from their work. The 19th-century British mycologist W. D. Hay noted that those entering the field "must boldly face a good deal of scorn," a hazard occasioned by the mushroom's long cultural association with witches, devils, damp and decay. Despite the fungus kingdom's great contributions to 20th-century medicine--penicillin, among many drugs, was derived from a fungus--today's mycologists aren't exactly the rock stars of field biology.
“We're always trying to drum up support for mushrooms," said Dr. Czederpiltz, a Forest Service mycologist based in Madison, Wis. "It's an uphill battle. Cute, pretty or furry things tend to get all the attention."
That lowly reputation attracts few young scientists, which means that mycology remains a wide-open field. "This is a relatively young science," Lorelei Norvell, editor of Mycotaxon, said in a telephone interview. "We're still trying to figure out what the varmints are."
A fungus, Dr. Czederpiltz said, is "just a mass of threadlike cells." The part we see, the mushroom, is merely the fruiting body--like the apple on a tree. The body of the fungus is made up of those threadlike cells, known as mycelium, that are so small they can grow right through what we perceive as solid objects, like wood, leaves or toenails.
"This jungle is full of fungi," Dr. Czederpiltz said as he crept slowly down a steep ridge. "It's all around us. If you removed all the trees and soil and left just the fungi behind, you'd still be able to see the outlines of the trees and soil."
Dr. Baroni and Dr. Lodge specialize in agarics and boletes, your classic stipe-and-cap mushrooms. Their specimens appear positively sexy compared with Dr. Czederpiltz's quarry, the corticioids, or crust fungi. "My stuff often looks like old paint splashed on a log," he said.
During the Doyle's Delight expedition Dr. Czederpiltz could often be found scraping the undersides of rotting logs with a penknife. His colleagues traveled low and slow through the jungle. Dr. Czederpiltz moved lower and slower. In the hunt for new species, he said, corticioid experts rarely enjoy that "Aha!" moment in the field.
"The specimens Tim and Jean collect are so big and charismatic that if they find a new species it may be immediately obvious," he said. "The literature on crust fungi is so obscure that it may take me years to figure out whether the stuff I'm cutting off this log is new to science."
The obscurity of Dr. Czederpiltz's crust fungi belies its crucial role in the forest ecosystem and the planet's carbon cycle. Corticioids release the carbon locked up in trees by turning wood into soil. Without them, the earth's forests would be piled high with dead trees. Wood is a mixture of cellulose and lignin, a natural polymer. Bacteria and insects, a forest's major soil producers, have a hard time getting around the lignin. Only a fungus produces the enzymes capable of breaking it down.
"If we can figure out how these crust fungi break down wood," said Dr. Czederpiltz, "we might be able to develop forest management techniques that alleviate the problem of fuel buildup in forests around the American West." It may be years before Dr. Czederpiltz knows if he has found a new species.
Dr. Lodge and Dr. Baroni had a good deal more excitement. On the second day of the expedition, Dr. Baroni had just lit his midmorning cigar when a shaft of light broke through the trees and highlighted a brilliant yellow hygrocybe.
"Jean!" he called out. "I've just seen one of the biggest mushrooms yet. And it's one of yours!" Hygrocybes (pronounced hy-GRAW-sib-eez) are one of Dr. Lodge's specialties.
She cautiously set the specimen in her tackle box. "If the ridge hadn't been so steep," she said later that day in camp, "I'd have been dancing."
The brilliant yellow-capped mushroom isn't officially a new species yet. From here, Dr. Lodge will take it back to her lab in Puerto Rico. Then the detective work will begin.
"It's like solving a murder mystery," she said. "I have to go through the literature and make sure nobody's already described this particular mushroom. It's not easy. Sometimes a mycologist 50 years ago will have seen the same species, but misidentified it or misplaced it in the taxonomic record. You have to deduce where someone would have misplaced it, find its most likely hiding place," she said, as if it were a library book a patron had put back on the wrong shelf.
When she's certain the mushroom is truly new to science, Dr. Lodge will write a journal article and name the fungus. That's the fun part. On the last day of the expedition, as Dr. Lodge sat waiting for the British Army helicopters to arrive, she was already mulling the possibilities.
"What do you think of Hygrocybe doyles delightiorium?" she said.
Ed. Note: Dan Czederpiltz was a student at Tom Volk’s lab, and recently finished his Ph.D. I met him and a bunch of Tom’s students at an Edible & Poisonous Mushrooms of Michigan Workshop at the Ford Forestry Center of Michigan Technological University in Sept., 2002. Tom was one of the Instructors there. He is training a whole new generation of mycologists up in LaCrosse. Another good reason to attend NAMA’s Foray there next July.
Ed. Note: The following was forwarded to me by Walt Sturgeon, who also included his own personal thoughts:
" Emily was a treasurer of the club for several years and very active in the 1980's. She had an eye for the unusual and the aesthetic and a keen curiosity. I had the pleasure of mushrooming with her many times. She would get much more excited over a beautiful mushroom to photograph than a whole basket of morels. She carried a white umbrella to use to diffuse light giving her pictures soft lighting and bringing out textures. A common sight was Emily on the ground, umbrella covering her subject and her upper body. She was an unforgettable woman and will be missed by all who knew her.---WS"
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Emily Johnson spent a lot of her time behind a camera and on her belly. As a result, she was one of the most well-respected mushroom and fungi photographers in the eastern United States.
She also produced some very distinctive Christmas cards.
"I always enjoyed getting Aunt Emily's Christmas cards because she always used her mushroom photographs," said Barbara Bly, a niece. "They were so pretty we'd always save them." Mrs. Johnson, a 40 year resident of Export, who moved to Stone Brook Manor in Manor following a stroke, died Dec. 21 at Allegheny General Hospital. The cause of death was a head injury suffered in a fall. She was 79. Mrs. Johnson, whose given name was Amelia, was a native of Plum, where she set up a photographic darkroom while still in her teens. She spent more than 30 years enthusiastically traveling, hiking and photographing mushrooms and other fungi throughout the eastern United States and Europe. "She loved nature and would go on nature walks at the Audubon Society's Beechwood Preserve and the Todd Sanctuary near to where she lived," Bly said. "She would travel, too, to seek out mushrooms in marshes and woods."
Mrs. Johnson's photos appeared in numerous books, including the "Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms," "Mushrooms of Northeastern North America," "Mushrooms of the World" coloring book, and "Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the World," published in 2003, which has one of her photographs-a brilliantly red and yellow Caesar's Amanita-on its cover. "Emily was a true master at capturing the beauty of mushrooms on film-an art made especially difficult by the low-light conditions of the forest floor where the lovely organisms she passionately sought hid far below the protective canopy of the forest," said David Fischer, who co-authored "Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America," and "Mushrooms of Northeastern North America," both of which contain Johnson's photographs.
Tall, slender, and quietly modest, she nonetheless gave numerous talks about mushrooming through the Audubon Society and other organizations and participated in the North American Mycological Association's teaching Kit program.
"She was a wonderful person and a very, very good photographer," said Judy Rogers, executive secretary of the Mycological Association. "Her lighting techniques made mushrooms stand out and yet still appear very natural. She spent a lot of time helping many of us learn how to take photos and critiquing our work."
In February, Mrs. Johnson donated her collection of 10,000 mushroom slides valued at $100,000 to the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Steven Stephenson, a research professor who worked with Mrs. Johnson on several projects, said when the collection was donated that the slides will be "a tremendous education resource for our students." Some of the slide images will also appear in an upcoming book about mushrooms associated with oak trees in eastern North America.
Another niece, Joanne Klemendic, said her aunt was also one of the earliest organic gardeners and composters, with an interest in nature that went well beyond mushrooms. "Her interest in the environment was much more far-ranging,' Klemencic said. "She was always concerned about the land."
Mrs. Johnson is survived by her sister, Caroline Fiore of Ledgewood, N.J. A private service took place last week. Burial was in Plum Creek Cemetary. (Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or at 412-263-1983.)
Editor's Note: This summer, the NAMA Foray will be here in the Midwest, a "scant" 600 miles from northeastern OH. While it may seem a trifle premature to give you this much detail so far in advance, traveling to LaCrosse is something of a trek and your editor is happy to be dreaming about July in Wisconsin in the drab northeastern Ohio February! Planning is currently in progress and more updated information will be forthcoming at www.namyco.org.
The following are excerpts from Tom Volk's webpage, www.botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/.
The North American Mycological Association (NAMA) national foray will be Held at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, July 21-24, 2005. The foray is hosted by Dr. Tom Volk. LaCrosse is located on the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin in the famous "driftless" area of Wisconsin. You may recall that glaciers flattened most of Wisconsin{and northern Ohio!} Minnesota, and parts of Illinois. However, this glacier split near Red Wing, MN (north of LaCrosse) and left the land intact. However, these mile-deep glaciers retreated and eventually melted. The enormous runoff of water carved many "coulees," our fancy name for small valleys with many rivulets and creases. Eventually the water from these coulees joined together, and the trillions of gallons of water carved out the Mississippi River. Several of our forays will be up these coulees and on the bluffs. If you're familiar with the Mississippi River only at St. Louis, Memphis, or New Orleans, where the river is contained by levees, the river has essentially become a big ditch. However, the Mississippi River north of the Wisconsin-Illinois border is very different, with 500-600 foot bluffs on either side of the river, with many flood plains and backwaters. At LaCrosse the Mississippi River is about a mile across. LaCrosse sits on a wide flood plain between the river and the bluffs. You may also have the opportunity to collect in the flood plain of the Mississippi River, with giant cottonwoods and huge river birches. Because the glaciers missed us, the driftless area is a refugium for plant and fungal species not found elsewhere in the upper Midwest.
A highlight of the 2005 NAMA foray will be the chance to see a forest of American chestnut trees (Castanea dentata). You probably know that almost all the chestnuts in Appalachia and other parts of eastern North America were wiped out (or reduced to understory plants) by Cryphonectria parasitica, cause of Chestnut blight. However, while all this was happening, circa 1900 a farmer from Pennsylvania planted 11 chestnut trees along the edge of his field. These 11 trees grew and multiplied to about 6000 trees larger than 5 inches diameter. These trees were free from chestnut blight until about 1988, when the blight appeared on a single tree. Despite control attempts by researchers from the Wisconsin DNR, West Virginia University, and Michigan State University, the blight has continued to spread, and now about 1500 of these trees have died, although some parts of the forest remain largely uninfected. Inoculations of the trees with hypovirulent strains of the fungus have slowed it down, but trees are still dying. This may be your last chance to see a mature chestnut forest.
In addition to the forays, there will be many lectures and workshops by mycologists from all over North America and Europe. All levels of expertise will be accommodated, from beginners to intermediate to advanced.
We will have very reasonably priced housing in one of the residence halls on campus. Dining will be reasonably priced on the campus, with breakfast and lunch at the student cafeteria; actually they are very good. Catered dinners will be held in a banquet hall, followed by the programs for that evening. We'll have some special surprises activities that you will like a lot.
The following link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ohioms Will get you into a website which, to quote their HomePage: "was established as a communication tool for members of the Ohio Mushroom Society but can be used by anyone with an interest in Ohio mushrooms. You can post information about the mushrooms you have found, post pictures, ask questions, inform others of events in your area, setup mini forays or just lurk and learn." The next time you find yourself surfing the web, give it a try!
N. B. Ohio State Parks will soon implement a $5 parking fee!! A one-time payment of $20 allows you to park at any State Park throughout the year, a real bargain!!
Email Jerry at g_pepera@sbcglobal.net to receive notification of impromptu events. Check your most recent issue of the Mushroom Log for event updates and for more detailed information. Please plan to join us.
April 23rd (Sat.)--morel miniforay at Salt Fork State Park at Cambridge OH (eastern OH near the junction of I-77 and I-70). Convene at 9:00 at State Park Office parking lot. Hunt departs promptly at 9:30 am. Sharon (330)457-2345
April 30th (Sat.)--morel miniforay at Beaver Creek State Park. Meet at McDonald's in Calcutta, Ohio on Rte 170. Depart for the hunt promptly at 9:30. Walt (330) 426-9833.
May 8th (Sun. am, Mother's Day) morel miniforay at Delaware Wildlife Management Area. Convene at 9am at the fishing bridge parking lot (just east of Rtes. 229 & 23), unless it's flooded. Foray departs promptly at 9:30 am. Call Daphne at (614) 475-4144.
July-Summer Foray at Hiram College Natural Area. Pete & Pauline Munk.
July or Aug-miniforay at Denison's Biological Field Station, Granville OH. Call Dick Doyle at (740) 587-0019.
July or Aug-miniforay at Crane Hollow. Details TBA (Doyle/Sturgeon)
Sat. Sept. 17 miniforay at Hiram College Natural Area. Call Pete & Pauline Munk at (440) 236-9222.
Sat. Oct. 1-miniforay at Grove Woods in Trumbull County. Pete & Pauline Munk.
Oct. 8-9-- Fall Foray at Dawes Arboretum located near Newark, OH. Walt Sturgeon.
Sat. Nov. 12-9th Annual Dick Grimm Banquet at Buckeye Lake Yacht Club. Details in future newsletter.
April 30-May 1-Western PA Mushroom Club's (WPMC) Morel Madness Foray www.wpamushroomclub.org
May 13-15 --MI Mushroom Hunters Club's annual and famous Lewiston Weekend. Check their web site http://www.sph.umich.edu/~kwcee/mmhc/ for details Sept. 16-18-MI Mushroom Hunters Club FungusFest 2005 at the Howell Nature Center, 1005 Triangle Lake Road, Howell, MI. See their web site above. Sept. 10--The WPMC Gary Lincoff Mid Atlantic Mushroom Foray. See their web site above
July 21-24-NAMA Foray at Univ. Wisconsin, LaCrosse.
Aug. 11-14-NEMF Sam Ristich Foray in Mont Alto, PA. Info:http://www.nemf.org/files/2005/2005.html. This is a great opportunity for OMS members as it is a large foray within a day's drive of Ohio.
Sept. 29-Oct. 2rd--Wildacres Regional NAMA Foray, Wildac- res, NC Info: Allein Stanley (wildacres@namyco.org)