Fungi and people stories
John E. Peterson, Special to The Gazette
Thursday, October 23, 2008
I HAVE WRITTEN a couple of these columns about microbes in the past few months. They seemed to be of interest because I got a good many comments about them. Therefore, I would try that subject again, if I had my way.
Actually, this is a somewhat different subject. Those other columns were about bacteria. This one will be about fungi. Fungi are microorganisms, but quite different from the bacteria and viruses about which I wrote earlier. I did, however, long ago, write one about mushroom fairy rings. That was about fungi.
What are fungi? They are commonly called molds, yeasts, mushrooms, toadstools, puffballs, rusts, smuts, etc. They are multicellular microbes. Some of them are very much involved with humans, our activities and our history. Those are some of the things I want to tell you about. I will, if I have my way, so let us get on with it.
The British have long been drinkers of tea rather than coffee. Fungi are responsible for that. The big island just east of India used to be Ceylon. It was a British possession. It is Sri Lanka today and independent. Back in those British days, it was a huge producer of coffee for British use.
A fungal disease hit the coffee and literally wiped out the possibility of coffee growing there. Coffee would grow in South America, but the British had no possessions there. Tea would grow on Ceylon, so it became a huge tea producing area. And the British became tea drinkers.
One of the most expensive and delightful gourmet foods in the world is a fungus. It is the truffle. Truffles are puffball-like fungi which are produced under the ground. They are most common in the European area around Italy, but they are found in other areas of the world, also.
Since they are underground, they have to be located and dug out. Dogs are trained to do that. A good truffle-hunting dog is worth several thousand dollars. That is because a bushel of truffles, also, is worth thousands.
Obviously, when they are ready for human consumption, they will be very, very costly. They are. We don’t get them much in America. That is too bad, because they are superb food.
We have a song about chestnuts “roasting by the open fire.” And a poem about the village smithy “under a spreading chestnut tree.” Such songs and poems are old because you and I have never seen the American chestnut tree. Once, however, the entire Appalachian uplift, from Maine to Georgia, was a great chestnut forest.
A different chestnut tree was brought to America from Asia in about 1902. A fungus, endothia parasitics, was brought in on the Asian trees. It attacked the American Trees and by about 1934, the chestnut forest was gone. That is why you and I have never eaten chestnuts roasted over a fire.
Not all fungi are detrimental to we humans. Many of them form mycorrhizae and benefit our plants very much. That word means “fungus root.” Fungi are in many plant roots. They are beneficial. Orchids could not grow without them. Many pines must have them and on-and-on with many plants.
Our elm trees, also, have been threatened by a fungus. It came over from Europe in imported elm logs. It was soon devastating to our elms and was known as Dutch elm Disease. Fortunately, after much trouble with certain types of elms, our elms have pretty much survived.
The tomb of King Tut in Egypt was first entered by modern people in 1922. Several people entered it in following years. About two dozen of them died soon afterward. This led to disturbing King Tut’s tomb being called “The Pharaoh’s Curse.” Actually, the deaths were all caused by fungi.
When King Tut died in 1,350 B.C., fruits, vegetables and other organic things were put in the tomb with him. Blue, green and brown molds grew on those things. The fungi did not survive the 3,000 years, but their spores and hyphae turned into a dust. Those who entered, breathed this old fungal stuff and died of severe implications. it was a “fungal curse,” not the “Pharaoh’s Curse.”
Early explorers in western America were taught by the Native Americans to pack certain types of mud in their wounds. Or in the wounds of their horses. Mud into sores and wounds? Sounds crazy, but it worked. Why? Because, we know today, that mud contained Penicillin and other fungi. They produced antibiotics which healed the wounds.
A good many fungi produce hallucinogenic chemicals. They have been used by humans to produce mind-boggling sensations for centuries. Lots of stories about that role of fungi, but they will have to be told another time.
Enough stories about fungal and human relations for now. Perhaps I will tell more at another time. After all, I did teach mycology for 18 years at the University of Missouri. And plant pathology, too, where fungi cause about 80 percent of all diseases. So fungi are in my memory bank.
In the meantime, do think, as I have for years, that fungi are marvelous and important members of our biological world. You would think that way, if I had my way.