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The new Cornell Mushroom Blog

Kathie Hodge pointed me to the Cornell Mushroom Blog today, a “place for fungi to tell their stories.” A collective of faculty, staff, and students at Cornell University writes the blog, and Kent Loeffler, the departmental photographer, brings their words to life with his incredible photography. The image shown here, a comparison between a maze and a close-up of a Daedaleopsis confragosa underbelly, provides just one example from many eye-catching photos on this site.

The image shown accompanies a short treatise by Stephanie Gautama entitled, Daedaleopsis confragosa and the Minotaur, a solid exercise that provides a meaningful connection between the mushroom (known as the Blushing Bracket in Europe) and the myth. She wrote:

How did Daedaleopsis confragosa get its name? Being unfamiliar, Latin names often seem arbitrary, and sometimes they indeed are. The name Daedaleopsis confragosa however, is a meaningful one. Daedaleopsis refers to Daedalus, a skilled artificer of the Greek mythology whose famous maze looks strikingly similar to the underside of the fungus. The epithet confragosa means rough, and describes the tough and rugged texture of the upper side of the fungus. The image of the intricately woven, narrow passageways of a maze was probably in the mind of James Bolton when he first described and named the fungus in 1791.

Another report on “mycological poultry� (yes, chicken-of-the-woods, or Laetiporus huroniensis in this case) by Elan Margulies brings an insightful perspective to his adventures as a mycophagophobe who tastes this delight for the first time. As most of you know, there’s nothing like the taste of this mushroom to create a convert. Although Marqulies constrains his good cheer – slightly – throughout his writing, he reveals his true change of heart with a recipe for a Polypore Omelet at the end of his work.

The students’ personalities shine through in their writings, no matter whether the paper is one of slightly smothered amazement or one that exhibits scholarly polish. Each piece reveals the flow of material that follows curiosity, thorough research, and connections that brings on that “ah-ha!” found in epiphanies. And, the writing is short, a bonus that provides readers a great way to catch a few different perspectives and just as many different varieties of mushrooms in a single sitting.

My only disappointment is that the Cornell Mushroom blog is new (since October this year), so there are few entries to date. I’ll visit often, however, to read new entries, to learn, and to remind myself about how the mycelial web can lead a mycophagophobe to become a homo ludens in one short course.