robigalia

One of a number of Roman celebrated during this time of year to ensure a good growing season and bountiful harvest, the feast of the for the god Robigus was held on this day in the agricultural outskirts of the city.
The god, which was designated as the divine representation of fungal blight or rust needed to be propitiated in order to ensure that the crops wouldn’t spoil in the fields. Understood as a separate, corrupt manifestation of the same infestation that could be harnessed for fermentation, the games held at this time with their attendant feasts (see also) were also marked by rather dark sacrifices that expressed their anxieties over crop failure—especially for one this late in the growing seasons that wouldn’t be easy to recover from. Whereas animal sacrifice generally was reserved for livestock that was part of the Roman diet and was shared in a communal meal, Robigalia rather gruesomely demanded a dog with a red coat—that matched the rust disease—as form of homeopathic magic.
Other observations included a celebration of—for whatever reason—of male sex-workers, professional female prostitution having had their own honours in the previous days, specifically on Vinalia urbana, the grape harvest on 23 April. Though without the cruel bits, thankfully—or the fun bits either, I suppose, the holiday is preserved in Western Christianity with the same day of prayer and fasting known as Rogation (from the Latin to beseech—to ask God for protection from calamity) and was done to cleanse the body and mind in anticipation of the Ascension and farmers often had priests bless their crops, often holding mass and processionals in the fields.

pflanzenwissenschaft

Active at a pivotal time that marked the transition in field of nature studies from hobbyists to professionals and one of the first to adopt the classification system of Carl Linnaeus in the German-speaking community, Catharina Helena Dörrien was born this day in 1717 (†1795). A talented painter, Dörrien researched and catalogued native plants and fungi of the Principality of Orange-Nassau with over fourteen hundred watercolour botanical illustrations and many of her works are in the collections of the Wiesbaden Museum.

gastrodia agnicellus

Via ibidem, researchers at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew have released their top ten plant and fungal species new to science (see previously) of the some one-hundred fifty discovered this year, including what’s been dubbed the world’s ugliest orchid—found in the forests of Madagascar. Reliant on a symbiotic relationship with a particular fungus for energy—having no leaves or roots—emerges from a woolly stem only to flower and produce seed-bearing fruit.  An addition to the family commonly called ‘potato orchids’ and despite its unflattering, vaguely xenomorph chestburster appearance, its scent is reportedly a rather pleasant citrus one.

pilzfund

H and I wandered a bit in the woods foraging for mushrooms, and while we didn’t really encounter anything that we were reasonably certain was edible and warranted collecting and later research, we found that the forest was ripening with all sorts of fungi, including Wood’s Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae—see previously and which we forgot again was safe for consumption and is widely used in China—I just don’t know about the texture and the prospect of picking one up) that was pretty widespread along the path and some more nice examples of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria, Fliegenpilz, see above). 

A new variety that we had not encountered beforehand, however, were these colourful ones in the same family—sometimes referred to “verdigris agaric” called blue roundhead (Stropharia caerulea, der Grünblaue Träuschling)—the specific epithet caerulea being Latin for blue while for contemporary speakers it generally indicates a shade between azure and teal. Host trees are usually beeches (Buchen) and thrive in alkaline soils.

7x7

blood pudding: British public reject Magnus Pike’s (see previously) modest proposal as taboo  

urban jungle: artist employs banana fibre cocoons for the Milan of our over-heated future  

a fungus among us: Public Domain Review explores fungi, folklore and fairyland

object lesson: a 1937 experiment with remote learning to contain a polio outbreak 

those speedy clouds: Alvin and the Chipmunks cover Phil Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi—see previously  

maybe i’m immune: James Corden performs a soulful parody of the Paul McCartney ballad 

 the cask of amontillado: Spanish navy upholding tradition of ageing wine at sea, transporting a buttload of sherry around the world

palm house and parterre or bulletin of miscellaneous information

Underpinning nearly all life on Earth and comprising a majority of the planet’s biomass, the kingdoms of plants and fungi are constantly yielding up new discoveries that we must cherish and preserve as best we can, for their own sake and to mediate on the strange and novel adaptations and chemical magic that Nature has developed, some habitats lost before we could fully appreciate or even identify what sorts of treasures we’ve destroyed. Curators at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have selected ten superlative finds out of the some one hundred and nine newly, officially recognised species all across the globe to highlight this wonderful and surprising realm, including a berry that has the effect on the human palette of turning sour tastes to sweet (Synsepalum Chimanimani) and a tenacious shrub confined to a single waterfall that produces its own adhesive to stick to rocks and prevent it from being swept away.

pilzfund ii

Having had less success up until this point and a bit envious of neighbours who return after foraging with mushrooms by the crateload, H and I went exploring in the forest again and had some fortune gathering some edible specimens.
Careful to collect discriminately and not spoil the woodland ecology (responsible, surgical removal affords the chance for the fruiting body to regrow) and more careful research so as not to end up poisoning ourselves, we were able to identify, along with the usual fare, Goldröhrling (Suillus grevillea, the larch bolete—for the root of the tree it is often found), Steinpilze (previously) and Birkenpilze (Leccinum sabrum, the birch bolete) mostly.
Though by no means is this rule-of-thumb universal or not without exceptions but broadly, mushrooms with stalks and a spongy, porous underside of its cap, called boletes, literally from the Latin for edible mushroom—as opposed to gills underneath—can signify that it is safe for human consumption.  Please, however, consult the experts before trying to harvest wild mushrooms and know how to contact poison-control, just in case.

We were pretty selective and not more adventurous than is advisable and once H sautéed the mushrooms, that bucket reduced down to a small but very flavourful portion.

lion’s tooth

To discourage the agricultural practises that hold our environment in disdain the most—production of those staples for consumption in the West whose distribution network is so well established and seemingly seamless, that we as consumers can easily be blind to the human and ecological toll it exacts, a UK designer is developing a coffee substitute brewed from the roots of dandelions (previously here and here).
I’m a little skeptical and prepared for disappointment, inulin, the researcher’s target compound for extraction, we’re already familiar with in the form of chicory and camp coffee but the chemistry bears out and the roots do contain what’s metabolised as caffeine (my target compound) as well and would be willing to give it a try. It makes me wonder too how estranged in the first place might my beverage and its taste and aroma be already, encapsulated and shuttled through an inscrutable supply-chain estranged from the bean I associate with. The designer has additional, circular aspirations for composting the spent grains into a medium for home mushroom cultivation.

gemeine stinkmorchel

Just honoured by the German Mycological Association (Deutsche Gesllschaft für Mykologie, DGfM) as mushroom of the upcoming year, we were a bit excited to share a few prime specimens in the middle stages of development of the common stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus—that is, immodest and at least a relative thereof), widely recognised by dent of its signature carrion-like odour that attracts insects to spread the spores and its distinctive shape. Not pictured is its first egg-like stage (the immature ones are prized for their culinary value and supposed aphrodisiac qualities), but later growth with the stalk forming and an olive-coloured fruiting body known as the gleba. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to work out the sort of folktales sprouted up around these toadstools.

pilzfund

H and I went foraging for mushrooms recently and though we’re not averaging a good return on edible specimens from the field, we are getting exposed to quite the menagerie of woodland types of fungi during our scavenging.

 

Among the diverse exemplars that we find along the trail just metres from one another we encountered the poisonous and hallucinogenic fly agaric toadstool (Fliegenpilz, Amanita muscaria) quite often, others yet unidentified and works of art in their mystery, and another quavering discovery called a wood ear or a jelly ear (Judasohr, Auricularia auricular-judæ, so called from the traditional narrative that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an elder, the sambucus, Holunder tree and these mushrooms often appear at the base of such trees to remind the faithful of this act of betrayal).

For all of its rather Lynchian baggage, the wood ear is very much edible—if not a bit bland unseasoned, and is a staple for umami flavourant in Asian cuisine. Please click on the images for more detail.  The pharmacological merit of the fungus is currently being studied, research suggesting that its palliative use in folk medicine was not far off.

a fungus among us

Though tasking an artificial intelligence to name any thing can elicit some rather choice and bizarre monikers, it becomes doubly strange when training on classes of things which already have been given a rather off-kilter and proprietary form of nomenclature—especially to be found among cultivated foods (see previously)—with mushrooms, wild and domestic, being no exception—reflecting our own odd descriptors back to us.
Pictured is—found in the woods, I think (do not use this site as a guide to adjudicate anything fit for human consumption)—boletus edulis, otherwise known as a porcino, hog mushroom, Steinpilz, stone mushroom, Herrenpilz, a noble one, cep (French—for its fat stalk) and in English penny bun. While not poisonous, it is easy to mistake for its inedible—by dint of extreme bitterness—cousin, boletus badius. A few of our algorithmically-generated favourites included Sapient Ink, Wizard Flange, Grizzly-Faced Duckytoot and Smiley Facecap. Be sure to visit AI Weirdness at the links above for some more automated taxonomy and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a post.

nugrybauti

It’s funny how we fail sometimes to appreciate the idioms of our own language until we see them obsessed over by outsiders, like discovering a new cuisine or particular vintage—and we were visited by one such example (courtesy the always excellent Nag on the Lake) in the title term, which in Lithuanian means going astray whilst hunting for mushrooms (grybavimas).
Apparently a common enough occurrence to merit its own word—though the Lithuanian language affords such poetic licence—it also means figuratively losing the thread of a conversation or going off on a tangent. The recollection cited brings the word to life, but my search for more information was necessarily limited by my lack of insight into the language—but apparently by dint of its frequency in automotive advertising copy, it can also connote “off-roading.”

mycoremediation

Yesterday H prepared a fantastic mushroom and pasta dish with what’s called Kräterseitlingen (Pleurotus eryngii, le trumpet royale—elevate your minds!) as the main ingredient—the one in the background, not the psychotropic fly agaric in the foreground—and it turned out to be uniquely flavourful and relatively simple to make.

To serve four, one needs:
250 grams (9 ounces) of band noodles (fresh or dry)
250 grams (9 ounces, three large mushrooms) of King Trumpet mushrooms or substitute button mushrooms or chanterelles (Pfifferlinge)
2 teaspoons of butter
1 container of Crème Chantilly (unsweetened whipped cream, Schlagsahne) for texture
1 tablespoon of vegetable broth
A sprig of parsley
A clove of garlic
A large leek (Lauch) or onion
Salt and pepper to season

Begin preparing the pasta according to the instructions, boiling it in slightly salted water. Meanwhile dice the leek, garlic and mushroom, finely chopping the parsley. Braise the garlic and leek slices in a frying pan in the butter until the leeks turn glassy. Introduce the mushrooms and turn until lightly brown. Mix in the crème and broth and top with parsley over the pasta.

fungus among us

Inspired by the diversity of toadstools and mushrooms we came across recently on our walk in the woods, I was drawn to a special exhibit at Wiesbaden’s museum (previously here and here and probably in more spots) on the nutritive, toxic and social history aspects of fungi.
From classification and identification to application and preservation, the displays were engrossing and enlightening as they ranged from the culinary, pharmaceutical and their oversized role as pigments for dyes and warrior cosmetics and I especially liked the artistry of the dioramas with a section dedicated to the workshop that created these diverse, liminal (neither animal nor vegetable)  mushroom mannequins.
Actual specimens, like creatures of the deep, wouldn’t survive public scrutiny and many could potential offer hazard and models were made and placed in their native environments to illustrate their role in the ecologies of various biomes. The exhibits on the usage of fungi were supplemented by local anecdotal enterprises, like a crafty woman who coloured wool in many shades with mushroom sourced pigments and another who was a successful farmer and we’re thinking of cultivating our own in our root cellar and have embarked on a course of study to those ends.
It is strange to think how these elaborate and embellished fungal fruiting bodies are just vehicles, ultimately, to spread spores and propagate the species but I suppose that the same is true for ourselves, however we might consider ourselves the refined heirs of a long line of succession. 

daytrip: hochrhön

We had the chance to do a bit of local exploring near our home and we found the ruin (die Mauerschädel as it’s singularly known) of a fortified church built around the year 1000 and abandoned about three centuries later during the height of the plague (Pest) in the fields behind the village of Filke, the inter-German border separating Bavaria from East Germany once passing through the nave of the structure.
In the 1970s, the whole of the structure was ceded to Bavaria for security purposes. Though the outbreak of the plague is considered the likely culprit for its eventual abandonment, another anachronistic suggestion is that once bulwarks of the region, Filke and other surrounding settlements that essentially became ghost-towns before being eventually repopulated sacrificed themselves to the marauding tribes of the Huns, able to Christianise the scouting parties only to be later betrayed and massacred. A maiden in white is said to haunt the grounds, but that is a relatively recent embellishment.
Afterward, we took another detour to see some marshland in a nature reserve (the whole region is a nature reserve, really, but there are also specially designated areas that are protected from traffic and development) but the trails didn’t really get very near and the scrub separating it from the path was intimidating. H and I did however get the chance to explore the deep woodlands and encountered some deer that bounded past us before we could react.
More our pace, however, we found an assortment of mushrooms and toadstools that we resolved to learn about and come back to the clearing where they seemed to thrive.
The forest directly behind our house are baronial lands, still in the same family, and we wouldn’t want to be accused of poaching.

chanterelles oder pfifferlinge, linge, linge, linge

With Spargelzeit already just a fond memory this season, we are just entering into Pfifferlinge harvest time—called in English chanterelles (it sounds like a Doo-Wop group) and from the Greek κάνθαρος for a drinking tankard, the little yellow mushrooms looking sort of like a loving-cup—and we tried a new recipe for spaghetti with braised Pfifferlinge, onions and sundried tomatoes. It was pretty simple and not too labour intensive to make—plus very tasty, and seems fairly versatile and would work with other varieties of mushrooms, noodles and seasonings.

For four servings, one needs:

• 400g Pfifferlinge 
• 500g Spaghetti 
• 50g Sundried Tomato 
• 1 Garlic clove 
• 4 Spring Onions (Leeks) 
• 500ml Vegetable Broth 
• 1 large red onion 
• 1 bundle of fresh Parsley 
• 100ml of Crème Fraîche 
• Salt, Pepper, Nutmeg for seasoning and a bit of oil for frying 

Wash the Pfiferlinge and along with the diced onion, thinly sliced tomato and garlic, fry in a large pan on middle heat, turning often. To the side, prepare the pasta according to the instructions and the vegetable broth. After around ten minutes, when the spaghetti is nearly ready, cut the leaks into rings slice up the parsley and introduce it to the mix. Add the vegetable broth and bring to boil briefly before stirring in the crème fraîche. Season to taste and enjoy with a refreshing white wine.

fungus among us

Though not quite the confectionary house of the witch that lured inside Hansel and Gretel, a very clever student at London’s Brunel University (named for the famed architect and civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel) is developing a construction medium that fruits from edible mushrooms. The stringy, root-like mycelium is mixed with cardboard as a filler and then left to grow to form a pretty robust frame. The student envisions future bottom-up, pop-up kiosks and food booths serving dishes plucked off the walls. Apparently mycelium has already been field-tested and there is a precedent for these “mushroom sausages” as building elements with bio-bricks and other experiments that one can learn more about at the link above.

mycological characteristics

Kottke informs that the variety of mushrooms that certain dishes and culinary presentation calls for—and what we are readily willing to pay a premium for—are the same species of fungus but harvested at different points of maturity. The portobello mushroom is no different than dime-a-dozen button mushrooms, just with a better P-R agent. It makes me think of the great baby-carrot fraud, which are just the whittlings off of club-sized carrots that would not be seemly for the produce-aisle.

garden switchboard

For more than a century, botanists have known about the symbiotic partnership between fungi and plants—the networks of fungal mycelium bundled with the roots of shrubs and trees described as a “mycorrhiza” association that is mutually beneficial in helping the other extract certain nutrients from the soil. What researchers are just discovering, however, is the breadth and depth of those connections and the nature of that relationship that’s akin to a subterranean vegetable information superhighway: the long tendrils of the fungal mycelia link individual plants in myriad ways and are the lines of transmission for chemical signals through garden plots and whole forests.
In a fascinating overview from BBC Earth magazine’s archive, featured recently on Dave Log 3.0, ecologists examine how this fungal internet allows plants over great distances to not only warm one other of intruders, it facilitates the sharing of nutrients and even allows the older generations to aid new spouts with sustenance, sabotage of unwanted neighbours and even parasitic behaviours. I feel a little guilty for my potted companions now, who might feel essential restricted to solitary confinement. I suspect, however, there are other modes of plant communication. After seeing more devastating wildfires for Australia in the headlines, I learnt that not only are the eucalyptus trees evolved to be explosively flammable—not unlike the strange venomousness given to everything there—and many of the seeds of other trees will not germinate without a periodic scorched-earth policy (or alternatively, arson by self-immolation), further prior to the settlement of Europeans, the stretches of eucalyptus forest that are a familiar sight today did not exist. The Aborigines, who had been landscape artists for tens of thousands of years, were careful cultivators and kept the forests pruned back, favouring grasslands that acted as fire-breaks and foraging grounds for game. It seems the Aborigines knew the risk of letting Nature run its favoured course, and that begs the question: what is Australia’s (or any land’s) natural state—wild or tamed, either by exception or by tradition?

fungiculture

Spargelzeit (Asparagus season) with all its fanfare and focus is a distant memory by now but one up-side to the change of seasons and the cool and damp days ahead is the advent of Mushroom Time. Pfifferlinge, a savoury scalloped fungus found on tree trunks, is my favourite—celebrated with just as much intensity, and while any foraging for these gourmet delicacies, such work is best left to seasoned experts, many keeping the faithful locations of the appearance of this heritage fruiting a secret guarded as well as that for a prized vintner, since there are many more varieties that are deadly poisonous than edible. This time of year, many restaurants adjust their menus—Tageskarte, Speisekarte—to showcase this time-honoured mania.