Wood and Tree Fungi: Biology, Damage, Protection, and Use Book

First of all, I have a hard time recommending this book wholesale, because my dude makes a lot of tasteless jokes about his wife, various ethnic groups, feminism, etc. It's annoying and unnecessary to brighten up the text -- he writes about even the somewhat confusing or potentially dry aspects of fungus reproduction in an entertaining and interesting fashion. And that's why I kept reading, in spite of the random uncomfortable commentary; the actual substance of the book is fascinating.

A quick rundown by chapter (mostly because it's pretty dense and I'm trying to recall what all it contained):

In the first chapter, we are introduced to variety of stinkhorn mushrooms, which look like dicks sticking up out of the ground. Money takes this as an opportunity to talk about various evolutionary pathways and which enzymes might have been altered to present various mushroom configurations. Then we get into mechanisms of spore dispersal, particularly the catapult mechanism that basidiospore-type fungi employ, which uses a droplet of water to rocket each individual spore off the gill. (This book is largely focused on the various reproduction strategies of fungi, which are many and strange.)

Chapter two is a gross delight; here we talk about all the terrible stuff fungi can do to you. Most of the fungal diseases described tend to prey on people with compromised immune systems, though not all. We learn that the keratinized protein that make up hair can be digested into delicious food by various fungi, such as ringworm. Then we move on to one that eats bone, and Cryptococcus neoformans, which can eat into the brain. (The author then makes a quick digression into what enzyme pathways could be attacked to inhibit such infections.) Startlingly, we then learn that these yeast actually have a sexual life phase called Filobasidiella, a mycelium-growing spore-releasing organism that was long believed to be a separate species.

But NOW we must talk about melanin, which apparently fungi use in fun and exciting ways. Apparently melanin is used to protect invasive yeast, not just from UV radiation or whatever humans are doing with it, but also from the immune systems of the critters it invades. Naked, melanin-less yeast can be ejected from the body much more easily.

There are some more brain-eating fungus (Mucorales), and a horse-eating fungus (pythiosis insidiosi).

Onto chapter three. This one is all about hyphae, and/or mushroom tentacles. These guys are what allow fungi to penetrate any surface and absorb nutrients from just about anywhere. They are pressurized, and one individual fungus can spread their network of hyphae across tens of acres (see, Armillaria, which occupies a big chunk of Oregon.) The cells of hyphae, unlike those of plants or animals, tend to be connected across many linkages, so nuclei can squeeze back and froth along the chain. Using hyphae, fungi can eat up granite by secreting acids, which can later be followed up by plants. (Oddly, the rice blast fungus exerts even more pressure, and it has been used to penetrate Kevlar.)

Chapter four! Onto bizarre reproductive cycles, of course starting with Cordyceps, which in fact infects a variety of insects. Spore-filled stalks grow out of the fungal victims (cicadas, spiders, ants, termites). We are introduced to "ascomycetes" in this chapter, which are defined by certain of spore. This part I didn't quite follow, but we will return to spore classification repeatedly. Ascomycetes use cannons rather than slingshots to get their spores out and about. Interestingly, Cordyceps is related to Claviceps, or ergot, which has historically caused much misery to persons who eat rye flour. He then chats about Saccharomyces cerevisiae, baker's yeast. Yeast is good for grabbing nutrients in liquid, hyphae are good for grabbing nutrients in solid form. Other ascomycetes of note: morels and truffles. Nom, nom, etc.

Chapter five goes into great detail about Arthur Henry Reginald Buller, a mycologist who found the slingshot mechanism used by basidiospores. He lived in Canada. He was not well-loved by many colleagues. We digress briefly to Curtis Gates Lloyd, an amateur mycologist. He engages in mushroom politics. Extravagant mustaches abound.

Chapter six plows back into the fungal world, most particularly prismatic spores found in fast-flowing streams called "Ingoldian spores." This is the jumping-off point to talk about various spores in water, particularly those with flagella. This is perhaps the least enchanting chapter, as we talk a lot about the spore dispersal mechanisms of water molds.

Chapter seven: various sorts of sexual reproduction in fungi. This chapter talks a great deal about oomycetes, that is, water molds, which are not actually fungi at all. We also visit mycelia which mate with not just one other but multiple other mycelia, making rather complex offspring. (My favorite fact from this chapter is that hyphae cells only look like plant cells because they're always cut in cross-section; they're actually incredibly long. Also, every mushroom cell is like a stem cell and can regrow the whole mess at any time.)

Chapter eight gets back to the good stuff, i.e. horrible things mushrooms can do to you. We talk about Amanita virosa, which contains a potent liver toxin, and which takes a few days to kill the unwary snacker, as well as Amanita phalloides, the death cap. Apparently these both look rather like an edible mushroom from southeast Asia, which is a cruel coincidence. Money shares his frustration with identifying Little Brown Mushrooms, which I can respect. The going theory for why mushrooms produce such long-acting toxins, when it wouldn't necessarily help in warding off bears or humans or what-have-you, is that it probably discourages insect larvae from slowly munching their way through a variety of fruiting bodies. We briefly hop to Amanita muscaria, fly agaric, a psychedelic shroom. It is not terribly interesting, or at least not any more interesting than the variety of mushrooms which cause gastrointestinal distress, asphyxiation, and aflatoxin poisoning (the last being exemplified by a horrible turkey poisoning that left 100,000 birds dead in 1960). Money is not overly concerned about black mold, though he does lean toward the belief that fungal toxins have been used in certain incidents of chemical warfare.

The final chapter explains the title, and a lovely image it is -- of an ancient orchard, congealed into a dense mat of leaves, shadows, and mushrooms. This leads neatly into the bane of all apple growers, cedar-apple rust (called hawthorn-cedar rust in the text, or Gymnosporangium globosum), which has a complex and annoying life cycle. Black stem rust of wheat and barberries, Puccinia graminis, is even worse, with extra phases of various sorts of spore development. We learn about how clever (er, well-evolved) these fungi are in finding leaf stomata by which to invade plants, and how disease-resistant wheat resist their incursions. Black stem rust can be controlled by keeping barberries away from wheat, but coffee rust, a fungus with a similar life cycle, exists only on coffee, making its control a tricky proposal. We finish the book by talking about Magnaporthe, the rice blast fungus, which as previously mentioned, can drill through Kevlar with its hyphae (!) and Phytophthora infestans, the potato blight.

So. If any of that sounds interesting, this may be a book to flip through.