The Emporia Gazette

February 14, 2012

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Truffles are a fungus. They are related to mushrooms, puffballs and bracket fungi. The main difference is that the truffles produce their spores below ground. So how do several million microscopic spores get out into the air to be moved around and start new truffles? I would tell you about that, if I had my way.

Truffles are one of the outstanding gourmet foods of the world. A truffle, six-to-eight inches in circular mass, has sold for $300,000. Others have sold for over $200,000. Most of them, however, are only one-to-two inches in size, but they sell for hundreds of dollars.

The best truffles are found in the soils of northern Italy and southern France, but they are found in other parts of the world, too. The European truffle-hunters use trained dogs to sniff out the truffles in the ground and dig them out. Such dogs are worth several thousand dollars. But the truffle hunting man and his dog may find a bushel or so and the man does not have to work for the rest of the year.

The growing part of truffles and related fungi are masses of microscopic branching chains of cells. These are called hyphae and the entire mass — the fungal body — is the mycelium. This is underground or in plant tissues in most cases. When it is time to reproduce, structures in which microscopic spores — think of them as seeds — are formed. These are the mushrooms, puffballs or brackets which we see. There is no problem with the millions of spores in a mushroom dropping out, being blown or washed away and starting many new fungi. But how do those in an underground truffle get up where they can be spread about? The man and his dog get the truffles out, but they have not yet produced spores. Female pigs can find them, dig them out and excitingly tear them up. Could that spread the spores on mature truffles? I shall answer that question later..

First, let me tell you this story. You would, if I had my way. Back at the University of Missouri we hired a young botanist in about 1960. His name was Otto Stein, he was Jewish and his family had escaped from the Hitler Germany when he was about 11 years old.

One morning, at a coffee-break gathering, the conversation went to a topic which caused Otto to tell us this. The older German boys said that if a young man got an armpit of sweat going, wiped his hands on it, then wiped it on the front of his shirt and went up to a girl, it would excite her sexually. We all told Otto that was disgusting. He agreed, but that was what the big boys said. And what they did.

Less than 10 years after Otto told us his disgusting story, it was discovered that there was a sexually-stimulating pheromone in male armpit perspiration. It had no odor and it did not affect all females, but the olfactory system and brain of some did pick it up and were stimulated by it.

Another aspect of this same male chemical. Many men now put an attractive handkerchief in the breast pocket of their jacket. That was started, we are told, by young French men. They did it this way. They would take a handkerchief and wipe it on a heavy mass of armpit perspiration. Then, they would put the handkerchief in their jacket pocket and move up close to a young woman of their choice. It often worked as a real sexual stimulant.

Enough of that repulsive talk about humans. Let us get back to truffles. And to why did I tell these stories anyway? I told them because truffles contain this same pheromone as does male underarm perspiration.

Earlier in this story, I mentioned that female pigs could find truffles, dig them out and wildly tear them apart. That is because male pigs have the pheromone in them, too. It turns the females on and attracts them.

We do not know what other animals — those in the wild — also possess this chemical. Many probably do. And this is how the truffle spores get torn out of the ground and put into the air where they can be blown and washed around.

One of the things that has always intrigues me about this truffle story is that it illustrates the widespread diversity of some chemical substances in our world. Imagine this same chemical in humans, pigs, other animals and a fungus. That, in my opinion, is real diversity.

You need not think of truffles as crummy, nasty fungi, as my story may have made them seem to be. Think of them as expensive, top-flight gourmet foods. They are, indeed, that. That is the way you would view this fungus, if I had my way. It is an amazing organism.