The Urban Pantheist

At the end of the summer I earned my only two yellow jacket stings. I was using a shovel to lift a rock and then dig out a subterranean nest. I was entirely covered except for one hand--I got stung on the thumb and forefinger. Once I exposed the nest I soaked it with an aerosol insecticide. The nest was broken into dozens of little chunks of wasp-made paper on the heap of soil dug out and deposited onto my lawn. I left it as it was for a couple weeks. One rainy day I went back into that corner of the yard and discovered this: A fast growing fungus had colonized the paper nest pieces and thrown out beautiful fur-like sporangia. Water droplets clung to the mold spikes like glittering jewels.

Any guesses as to what the tempera paint is for?
( Read more... )

Green citrus mold Penicillium sp. possibly P. digitatum or P. italicum

The other day I came into the house and was hit with a powerful odor of citrus and garbage. I took out the trash and checked the compost but the smell persisted. Finally I found the bag of oranges that had "gone bad."

We think of rot as a passive, entropic process, something that just happens due to neglect. The truth is that living fungus organisms are putting themselves out there (literally) and working hard to cause rot. They put out invisible threads a single cell wide, and grow into their food source. They put out digestive enzymes and absorb the products that result. Eventually they produce spores--visible in this case as a grayish green coating--which drift into the air in the hope of landing on a suitable substrate to continue the cycle.

I put the spoiled oranges into our compost container, where the vigorous activity of many organisms turns our leftovers into fertile soil.

Another species of penicillium--one colonizing some bread--appeared in the 365 urban species project.

These boletes, infected with what is probably Hypomyces chrysospermus were growing at the base of one of the eastern white pines in my yard.

Hypomyces chrysospermus is a fungus that feeds on other fungi. It has a preference for bolete mushrooms--those with porous undersides rather than gills--first attacking the spore-bearing surface with a white mold. After the mold has consumed the mushroom, its tissue turns bright yellow, the color of its own spore-producing cells.

A related mold, H. lactifluorum attacks Russula and Lactarius mushrooms, turning them into the sought-after edible called "lobster mushrooms." Boletes parasitized by golden bolete mold are not considered edible.

Unidentified fly at Lost Pond. (Anyone?)

( more lost pond )

Photographs by cottonmanifesto

Urban species #062: Penicillum notatum (and other species)

My wife insisted that I could not open this article with the sentence below that begins the next paragraph. I'll try to introduce the topic more gently, but the topic after all, is mold. How is it that mold forms, seemingly from nowhere, on food that's been left out, or on flood-damaged walls? How, indeed, is it possible that mold was found to be growing on the International Space Station?

The air is always thoroughly, but invisibly, pregnant with mold spores. They settle on every surface, and if the surface is warm, wet, and organic, the spores may grow into a mature fungus that feeds unseen on that surface. When the fungus is ready, it produces the sporangia that produce the next generation of spores. In species in the genus Penicillium, the masses of spores are typically bluish green. Other molds can be black, orange, or white.

Penicillium is a common household genus, with many species, that grows on food products. There are a few species of Penicillium that are deliberately introduced into foods during production: P. camembertii and P. roquefortii are used to produce the cheeses hinted at in their scientific names. Penicillium notatum is probably the single most important organism in the history of 20th century medicine. In 1928 in a hospital in London, Alexander Fleming discovered, quite by accident, that this mold produced a potent bacteriacide. The discovery of penicillin heralded the age of antibiotics, and saved millions of lives from bacterial diseases.

( Do you dare get closer to the mold? )