new york mycological society celebration 2 who’s in a...
TRANSCRIPT
New York Mycological Society Celebration 2
Who’s in a Name? X, by John Dawson 3
Mycology in the Media, by Marshall Deutsch 6
Distant Harvests, by Susan Goldhor 10
Gabor Miskolczy 18
September 2012 Volume 67 No. 3
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NYC Fungi Group Celebrates 50th
in Sight, Sound, Mushrooms & Cage
The New York Mycological Society, a not-for-profit member-
ship organization dedicated to educating the public about mushrooms,
was founded 50 years ago at The New School as a seminar in mushroom
identification taught by the composer John Cage.
The Society is celebrating its anniversary with a presentation --
in theater and in exhibition -- that explores a life in mushrooms of its
founder whose centenary is also this year.
Both events will be held at The Cooper Union the weekend of
September 7-8, 2012.
The theatrical event, to be held in the Great Hall on Saturday,
September 8, will be a grand multi-media Cagean simultaneity featuring
live performance, a special realization of Cage’s 49 Waltzes for the Five
Boroughs, and a lively visual backdrop of mushroom stills and movies
collected and produced over the last fifty years.
The gallery event will include ephemera from the NYMS
archives, original pages from Cage and Lois Long’s Mushroom Book,
mushroom art by present and former NYMS members and a display of
mushroom specimens collected from the NYC environment.
The program is entitled 100/50th/Cage/NYMS — Roaming
Urban Soundscapes
These programs are being held as a benefit for the NYMS and
the John Cage Trust.
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WHO’S IN A NAME? X Galiella rufa
John Dawson
The rubber cup, Galiella rufa (Schweinitz) Nannfeldt and Korf, is
often collected in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Formerly known as
Bulgaria rufa, it was placed in a new genus by Richard Korf, who named
it Galiella in honor of one of his most important mentors, the French
mycologist Marcelle Le Gal.
Marcelle Louise Fernande Choquard was born in 1895 in
Amiens. Her father was director of the municipal railways there, and
was also an experienced naturalist and a noted watercolor painter. From
him young Marcelle developed an interest in nature that she maintained
throughout her life.
At school she was a brilliant student. After graduation from the
lycée in Amiens she went on to the Sorbonne, from which she earned a
Master of Arts degree in 1915. During World War I she attended a
private school in New York, and in 1920 she earned a second Master of
Arts from Columbia University. Though she had apparently intended to
undertake a career in teaching, on her return to France she passed an
exam for employment by the ministry of commerce, where she served as
a deputy for a few years.
And there she met Etienne Le Gal, a linguist, whom she married
in 1922.
A few years later Etienne, a gourmet, developed a passion for
mycophagy and began hunting wild mushrooms in the woods outside
Paris. Concerned about the danger of being poisoned, Marcelle began
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taking the specimens they collected to the cryptogamic laboratory at the
Museum to have their identifications confirmed. She quickly became
enthralled by the world of fungi and around 1932 began assiduously
attending meetings of the French mycological society. The director of the
cryptogamic laboratory welcomed her as an independent worker, and on
the advice of Roger Heim, one of the staff there, she began to specialize
in the study of discomycetes. Not long afterward she agreed to offer an
identification service at the Museum for those who brought specimens
there, a duty she carried out every Monday morning during and after
World War II. At the same time she began work on a doctoral
dissertation, in which she investigated the origin and morphology of
spore ornamentation in operculate discomycetes. Completed in 1944, it
won the prestigious Montagne prize of the French Academy of Sciences.
Three months after earning her doctorate she was named a
deputy for research at the cryptogamic laboratory of the National Center
for Scientific Research, where she spent the rest of her career. She became
head of research there in 1957 and retired in 1960. But even in retirement
she continued her research and publication.
Recognized as one of the world authorities on discomycetes, she
was invited to serve on the International Commission on Botanical
Nomenclature, and from 1954–57 served as president of the Société
Mycologique Française (the first woman to do so). In 1962 she also
became vice-president of the British Mycological Society.
The obituary memoir of Le Gal by H. Romagnesi, published in
the Bulletin of the Société Mycologique Française,1 lists 73 publications,
mostly, but not entirely, on discomycetes. They include not only works
1 Vol. 96, no. 2 (1980), pp. 125–131. That and the obituary of her in
Cryptogamie Mycologie (vol. 1, 1980, pp. 93–96) are the principal sources (both
in French) on which this article is based. The only source on Le Gal I have
found in English is a glowing posthumous tribute to her by Richard Korf
(Mycotaxon, vol. XIII, no. 1 [1981], pp. 1–4).
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on European species, but on species she collected on travels to Morocco,
Tunisia, and Canada, and on species sent to her by other collectors in
Madagascar and the Congo. Le Gal was particularly renowned for her
meticulously careful and detailed observations and drawings, always
based on material she had in hand.
Le Gal also published one popular work on fungi. Entitled
Promenades Mycologiques, it comprised a series of fictional descriptions of
walks taken by a teacher and student in various mycological habitats.
Regrettably, Le Gal’s monograph on species of Scutellinia
throughout the world, considered her greatest work, has remained
unpublished. To that work she had devoted almost all of her efforts since
her retirement, and by 1972 she had nearly completed it. But in that year
her beloved husband Etienne died — a shock from which she never
recovered. At that time, too, her vision began to decline, and she
withdrew both from scientific work and from society. She returned to
her home town of Amiens, leaving behind the proofs of her monograph,
and died there in 1979 from complications of cataract surgery.
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Mycology in the Media
Marshall Deutsch
Scientific American for April describes the specificity of the
mycorrrhizal fungi upon which orchids depend. Because the fungi have
no fruiting structures, researchers have had to test for DNA in the soil to
identify where and how much of these fungi are present. Older forests
were found to contain five to 12 times more orchid-friendly fungi than
younger forests, and the fungi in older forests were more diverse.
The New Yorker for April 16 contains a fleeting reference to
mushrooms in Russia’s vast forests in an article on Russian cookery and
more detailed references to mushrooms and truffles in Croatian food in
an article on the invasion of a Croatian town by partying British
students, while the April 23 issue of the magazine describes the use of
“wild mushrooms” in a dish created by a 13-year-old cooking prodigy.
Mycophagy is represented in National Wildlife for April/May;,
wherein we observe a photograph of an eastern box turtle munching
on a mushroom. And in Funny Times for May, we are told that “a
growing number of scientists are at work on biocomputer models based
on movements of slime [molds] to solve complex-systems problems…”
An application of this process had been described in New Scientist (NS)
for 24 March, and the publication printed my letter on the subject in the
issue of May 19. Here’s how my letter reads: “When I read about the
experiment in which slime mould spread patterns were shown to mimic
road networks in the US…, I thought it must have been carried out on
maps. Then I realized that many US roads have yellow lines down the
middle and that I had been incorrect in believing them to be lane
markers…they must be trails of Physarum polycephalum.”
The main editorial in Science for 11 May addresses the problem
of human fungal infection;, pointing out that “Over 600 different fungi
have been reported to infect humans, ranging from common to fatal
infections, including those of the mucosa, skin, hair, and nails, and other
ailments including allergies. Even influential international
organizations… appear not to fully appreciate the burden imposed by
infection with fungi” But all fungal interactions with other organisms
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aren’t harmful to the latter, and Science for 25 May describes how
Rhizobium bacteria interact with plant roots by using the same signaling
mechanism as is used by mycorrhizal fungi.
We don’t have roots (at least I know that I don’t) but we do
interact with the environment through fungal intermediaries that live in
our gut, and Science for 8 June describes how “the mammalian gut
contains a rich fungal community that interacts with the immune
system…” A review of this article appeared in Wired’s online blog one
day before its publication in Science, putting to shame this column, which
appears two months later.
A more serious and frightening delay is described in The Week
for June 8, wherein we learn that Swiss scientists “testing imported
products for radiation from the Japanese nuclear meltdown at
Fukushima last year found something even scarier—radiation from the
Chernobyl meltdown more than 25 years ago. None of the Japanese
samples tested positive for radiation. But a Ukrainian shipment of frozen
wild mushrooms had unacceptably high levels of radioactive cesium-
137. Ukrainian authorities had labeled the shipment as inspected and
cleared for consumption.”
A reader asks a question in NS for 16 June: “When I start to fry
mushrooms in oil they quickly absorb all the liquid, making the pan
quite dry. But after a couple of minutes they suddenly start to release it
all again. What’s going on?” I look forward to a reply.
Two interesting references to fungi appear in Science for 22 June.
One study shows that Metarhizium species (endophytes, fungi that live
within plant tissues without causing disease) can be conduits for
transferring nitrogen from animal sources to plants. (This paper is
described in NS for 30 June.)Another works out the mechanism whereby
the fungus that causes rice blast disease, Magnaporthe oryzae, can develop
the enormous internal pressure which it develops to rupture the rice leaf
cuticle. The latter study is referred to in Chemical & Engineering News
(C&EN) for June 25, along with one of the original illustrations.
Two important papers in Science for 29 June are nicely
summarized at the beginning of the issue: “Specific lineages within the
basidiomycete fungi, white rot species, have evolved the ability to break
up a major structural component of woody plants, lignin, relative to their
non-lignin-decaying brown rot relatives. Through the deep phylogenetic
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sampling of fungal genomes, Floudas et al….mapped the detailed
evolution of wood-degrading enzymes. A key peroxidase and other
enzymes involved in lignin decay were present in the common ancestor
of the Agaricomycetes. These genes then expanded through gene
duplications in parallel, giving rise to white rot lineages.” This work is
referred to in C&EN for July 2, wherein it is pointed out that the authors
note that the acquisition of the ability to degrade lignin resulted in the
end of coal formation.
Nature Conservancy issue 2 for 2012 reports that American beech
trees are under threat from beech bark diseases “caused by the one-two
punch of insect and fungus.” And Harper’s for July reports in Harper’s
Index on the effect of white-nose syndrome: “Minimum amount the loss
of bats will cost U.S. farmers in pest-control this year: $3,700,000,000,”
and, on the last page of text that “Entomologists comparing Brazilian
and Thai zombie-ant graveyards determined that an unknown fungus
was thwarting the spread of the ant-zombifying fungus.”
Nice detective work in NS of 7 July, wherein is explained how
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a single-celled fungus which was
normally about as threatening as athlete’s foot to the amphibians it
associated with, has come to threaten amphibians worldwide with
extinction. Strains of the fungus have been around for a long time
without wiping out amphibian populations, and one theory is that they
have become deadly because of changes, such as exposure to pollutants.
But the same deadly variant seems to be wiping out amphibians
worldwide, so the question to be answered is How does it spread? The
answer seems to be that transportation by H. sapiens has spread it, e.g.,
by international dissemination of African clawed toads for pregnancy
testing and bullfrogs for eating.
Larry Millman calls our attention to an article in The Globe and
Mail for July 10. The article describes and shows a picture of a puffball
weighing 57.4 pounds. Other big news in the piece concerns the theft of
some potato chips.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reprinted on July
11 an article entitled “The Place of Mushrooms in the Diet” which it had
originally published 100 years ago. It is an interesting article which
makes the point that the nitrogen content of mushrooms does not reflect
their protein content very well, since much of the nitrogen is in
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compounds other than proteins. By turning down my request to permit
republication of the article in this Bulletin the editors lost a chance to
become famous.
Three experts provide three different answers to a reader’s
question in NS for 14 July. The questioner asks why the inner layer of an
onion turned rotten while the surrounding layers remained unaffected.
Only one expert suggests that a fungus (Botrytis allii, which causes a
disease of onions called neck rot) is the culprit.
An article in NS for 28 July points out that “the US is in the grip
of the worst drought in over 50 years” and that developing genetically
modified plants to overcome the problem would take a long time.
However, heat resistance to a grass—Dichanthelium lanuginosum—that
grows at 70°C can be shown to depend on its fungal endophytes. This
suggests that transferring the latter to a plant might make it heat
resistant, and an experiment showed that this was true in the case of
wheat. Salt resistance and cold resistance were transferred to rice plants
in a similar manner. The article points out that “endophytes have a
definite advantage over GM [genetically modified] crops: farmers could
decide whether to spray their seeds with them at the beginning of the
planting season rather than gambling on a drought-tolerant variety.”
Another way that fungi can be helpful is detailed in C&EN for
July 30 in an article headed “Superoxide-Producing Fungus Sponges Up
Mine Metals” wherein is described the precipitation of manganese from
acid mine drainage as a possible bioremediation technique.
Sierra magazine for July-August explains what fungi are and
goes on to point out that “Fungal devastations of bats, bees, and
amphibians have received the most press…[but] we should be just as
worried about plants. Pine pitch canker, sudden oak death, and blue
stain fungus are reducing the number of trees available to sequester
carbon dioxide, and fungal infections destroy enough food crops each
year to feed 8 percent of the world’s population.”
Then again, fungi are a food source for famous mathematicians.
Playboy for July/August notes that Grigori Perelman (who proved a
Poincaré conjecture which had been resistant to proof for 100 years)
brushed off a journalist who telephoned him with “You are disturbing
me. I am picking mushrooms.”
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Distant Harvests
Poison, Ants & Women in Science
Susan Goldhor
Since I’m never sure how many readers persist until the end of
these ramblings (actually, I’m not sure how many even start), I feel that
the most urgent message should come first. So, here it is. Imagine that
you find yourself faced with a case of amanitin poisoning. Of course, all
BMC members are far too knowledgeable to eat a toxic amanita. So it’s
not you, moaning and retching in the ER; it’s an acquaintance. Or
perhaps a total stranger, and you’ve been called in to give advice
because of your known interest in matters fungal. Or -- the most likely
scenario of all -- a vet’s office and a deathly ill dog. What advice do you
give? The doctors are madly googling, and talking about oral
administration of activated charcoal, extract of milk thistle (silymarin)
and antibiotic. Or even worse, a liver transplant. You know that the
antibiotic plus oral charcoal and milk thistle might work but might not.
And that a liver transplant depends upon a suitable and willing donor.
Here’s where you save the day and emerge as a superhero. You tell
them to rehydrate the patient immediately; to set up nasobiliary
drainage, and to send posthaste to Europe for intravenous silymarin
(Legalon®), manufactured in Germany by Madaus. (Information
courtesy of a recent email from Michael Beug saying that he now
believes that oral milk thistle is totally useless, but that “there is a second
treatment that is very important - that involves a tricky surgery to set up
a drain for the bile duct (called nasobiliary drainage) so that amatoxin
does not keep recirculating through the liver. It is an old treatment that
had been seldom used but has seen considerable recent success in dogs
and in humans.”)
The first published report of the use of injectable silymarin for
amanitin poisoning was in the 2008 Toxicology Report of the North
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American Mycological Association by Dr. Michael Beug
(http://www.fungimag.com/summer-08-articles/12_Beug_Final.pdf). He
writes: “Legalon® is used in 13 European countries where it is
considered to be the only effective therapy for combating amatoxin
poisoning. The effects were dramatic when it was used this January in
California. On four patients with LFTs in excess of 10,000 (up to 18,000)
and prothrombin times and thromboplastin times (clotting factors) so
high that one would expect on average 84% mortality (my conclusions
from the data) all four patients showed dramatic improvement in liver
function after injection of Legalon® (Todd Mitchell, MD, personal
communication). All soon recovered liver function, though the most
elderly 83 year-old patient succumbed to kidney failure. There is no way
that there will ever be a clinical trial to prove that Silymarin helps in
these cases but there is also no evidence to suggest that it should not be
used. Indeed, this one dramatic case leads me to conclude that we should
do everything we can to support making injectable Silymarin available
for experimental use in these relatively rare poisonings. Silymarin has
been experimentally tested in dogs and it is highly effective in treating
dogs poisoned by deadly Amanita species." Since this report was
written, there has been broader acceptance of injectable silymarin,
although it must still be imported from Europe and treated as an
experimental drug. Note that there is a now a Clinical Trial in the U.S.,
whose P.I. is the aforementioned Dr. Todd Mitchell of Dominican Santa
Cruz Hospital, Santa Cruz, CA.
Psychologists tell us that a person’s best and worst traits are two
sides of the same trait. I think that’s true. And sometimes I think that
the same can be said of toxins. We think of amanitin as a destroyer of
livers and kidneys, but German medical researchers are working on a
way to use ⍺-amanitin to save lives. Because amanitin is so toxic to cells,
it can be used to destroy cancer cells. The problem is that you can’t
simply administer it to the patient because it will kill all the other cells as
well. (This is, in fact, the general problem with chemotherapy, and why
it can have such terrible side effects.) What Drs. Moldenhauer and
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Faulstich are doing is to attach the amanitin to a cancer-cell-surface-
specific antibody (not 100% specific but as good as it gets). It turns out
that accomplishing this requires walking a diabolical tightrope.
Amanitin is a great candidate for this procedure because it’s a small
molecule that our immune system doesn’t recognize as foreign (one
reason why it’s a great toxin), and it’s robust enough that you can carry
out the procedures needed to attach it to an antibody. The toxin must
enter the cancer cell and detach there from its antibody carrier, but it
can’t detach earlier when it will poison normal cells. The dosage must be
tightly calibrated, since small amounts of the target molecule are on the
surface of normal cells. It has worked on mice, and we can only hope
that when human trials start, it will work on us as well. I had read about
this earlier in the medical literature and was reminded of it in Puget
Sound’s Spore Prints, excerpted from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/
releases/2012/04/120402112934.htm where you can read about it as well.
In the last Bulletin, I wrote (at length) about fungus-farming ants.
Now I learn (again via Spore Prints) that the relationship between these
ants and their crops is even tighter than was previously thought. Each
species of farming ants grows a single species of fungus, and this is true
even when the nests of a particular species are separated by thousands of
miles. In at least one case, researchers think that the relationship is more
than 5 million years old. This fidelity is not due to a lack of other
potential partners; alternative fungal cultivars would be easy for the ants
to access. (The fungi are more promiscuous; one species of fungus may
be farmed by more than one species of ant.) The researchers worked
with a group of ant species (Cyphomyrmex wheeleri) which is intermediate
between the lower and higher fungus farmers, and found that every
instance (and such instances are rare) of a change in the fungal species
cultivated was linked to a species divergence for the ants. One reason
for the tight coupling between ant species and the fungus that they
cultivate may have to do with odor recognition within an ant species,
and the possibility that the fungus grown may play a role in the species’
odor. (As we all know, it’s important for ants to have a recognizable
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odor since a strange odor leads to death and dismemberment by one’s
fellows.) The lead researcher for this work was Natasha J. Mehdiabadi
(affiliated with both the Smithsonian and the U. of MD), and I googled
her because scientists’ websites often offer ways to get around the
payments charged by journals for accessing recent articles. In fact,
Natasha’s website said that the article was still in press, although by
googling another author, Ted Schultz, I was able to get the article. What
googling Natasha did get me was a series of images worthy of a
glamorous film star, although her official Smithsonian photo shows her
in field attire rather than the evening wear shown elsewhere. I was
disappointed to note that Ted’s website and affiliated sites shows just a
regular guy, although his official photo offers the charm of him peeking
out of an excavated ant nest. Just to let you know that googling scientists
offers unexpected pleasures.
Having gotten a little carried away with Natasha, I went on to
the next article of interest (or anterest), on the subject of bacteria living in
ant fungus gardens, and googled Kristin Burnum, a scientist at DOE’s
Pacific Northwest Lab, interested in biofuels and a co-author of a multi-
authored paper entitled, “Metagenomic and metaproteomic insights into
bacterial communities in leaf-cutter ant fungus gardens” (DOI:
10.1038/ISMEJ.2012.10). Unlike Natasha who is a glamorous brunette,
Kristin is a lovely blonde who looks like a Miss Teen America. At this
point I temporarily lost interest in ants and fungi and went into a
meditative trance on the subject of the changing appearances of women
in science. When I was in grad school, we were not gorgeous. In fact, if
we had any tendencies in that direction, we squelched them. We would
sooner have posted evidence of faking data than glamor shots. My
roommate was gorgeous -- the kind of movie star gorgeous that couldn’t
be covered up with lab coats and scrunched up hair -- and she was
punished for it over and over. Despite the fact that she was by far the
smartest person in her lab, and a hard worker, she barely got her Ph.D.
So to me, Natasha and Kristin were powerful signals of how far women
have come in science. Just as men were never punished for being
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handsome, beautiful women can now be accepted as good scientists and
equal colleagues and get and hold good jobs. It took far too long but
we’re finally there. And now back to the ants and their fungus gardens.
What this paper shows is that the fungal garden is actually a
lively and complicated community of one species of fungus, one species
of ant, and many many species of Enterobacteria from at least five
different genera. The garden is essentially the external digestive system
of the ants, who feed the fungus on leaves that are poor in nitrogen and
high in indigestible lignocellulose, and then eat the more nutritious
fungus. The authors write, “Herbivores gain access to nutrients stored in
plant biomass largely by harnessing the metabolic activities of microbes.
We show that these bacterial communities possess genes associated with
lignocellulose degradation and diverse biosynthetic pathways,
suggesting that they play a role in nutrient cycling by converting the
nitrogen-poor forage of the ants into B-vitamins, amino acids and other
cellular components. . . Together with recent investigations into the
microbial symbionts of vertebrates, our work underscores the
importance of microbial communities in the ecology and evolution of
herbivores.”
And now back to women in science. As many BMC members
know (at least those who were present at Suzanne Terry’s talk about
Beatrix Potter a few years back), Potter did not start out hoping to write
children’s books other than as gifts to the occasional lucky tot. Her very
considerable talents for illustrating nature were largely spent on
mycological subjects, and her ambition was to be a botanist, fungi then
being regarded as oddball members of the plant kingdom. Indeed, by
1901, she had completed 270 watercolors of fungi, which are now housed
in the Arnitt Library, Ambleside, England. Although her parents
attempted to make her their housekeeper, her uncle, Sir Henry Roscoe,
who was a scientist and the vice-chancellor of the University of London,
introduced her to George Massee, the mycologist at the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew, so that she might tell him about her success at
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germinating the spores of the Velvet Shank fungus. As Jennifer
Cunningham wrote in Scotland’s The Herald, “Mr. Massee was
dismissive. Potter lost his sympathy on three counts: she was a woman,
an amateur, and she had succeeded in germinating fungal spores to a
greater degree than he had.” However, whatever we may think of Mr.
Massee, he was far more open-minded than Sir William Thistleton-Dyer,
the Director of Kew Gardens. “On Massee’s advice, she read the
findings of Julius Brefeld, a German mycologist who had done a
considerable amount of work on germination. This convinced Potter of
the correctness of her own work and she wrote up her results for the
botanists at Kew. The Director rejected it but Mr. Massee was now
prepared to acknowledge her discovery and collaborate with her. The
Linnean Society did not admit women and so Mr. Massee presented the
paper on Potter’s behalf on April 1, 1897.” On April 20th of this year,
celebrating the centennial of the Arnitt Library, a summary (prepared by
Professor Roy Watling since the original paper had been lost) was read at
the Linnean Society by Ali Murfitt, a young female mycologist, dressed
as Beatrix Potter would have been in 1897. Although admittedly a
publicity stunt to bring attention to the Arnitt Library and the Linnean
Society, this was widely reported and brought Beatrix to the public’s
attention once again.
To us Potterers, this brought back memories of another event,
which was covered in the May, 1997 issue of Spore Prints (thank you,
once again, Puget Sound mycophiles!) by Agnes Sieger as follows: “A
century later, the Linnean Society of London has finally apologized to
Beatrix Potter for scorning her paper . . . which she tried to submit to the
Society in 1897. . . . Her watercolors of fungi had superb taxonomic
detail, but were dismissed as too artistic to have scientific value. She was
the first person in England to realize that lichens are symbiotic
relationships between algae and fungi, but her idea was ridiculed by an
esteemed botanist. Learning that mycologists didn't know how to culture
fungal spores, she studied spore growth through the microscope for long
hours, and in April 1897 submitted a paper, "The Germination of the
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Spore of Agaricineae," to the Linnean Society. According to John
Marsden, present executive secretary of the Society, "Her paper had to be
refereed by two people, one of whom was Sir William Thistleton-Dyer.
Although he apparently knew next to nothing about botany, he became
the director of Kew Gardens, so was highly respected." He scorned her
ideas and suggested she should go back to school before trying to teach
experts. She withdrew the paper [i.e., it was read by Massee but not
published], and it was burned [probably in a bombing raid] with other
papers after her death in 1943. One-hundred years later, a booklet, Flora
for Fauna, illustrated with her drawings is being published by the
Linnean Society, and their Program of Events for April features a talk by
Dr. Roy Watling, FLS, on ‘Beatrix Potter as a Mycologist—The Period
Before Peter Rabbit and Friends.’”
Like any good feminist, I’m sorry that Beatrix was cut off from
her chosen path, and experienced so many and such cruel rejections. But
I can’t help wondering if she was better off as a writer of children’s
books. Scientists are part of an evolving group process; unless they are
truly spectacular, they are lost to history as individuals. Had she become
a mycologist, we would not have a Beatrix Potter Society today, her
home would not be a National Trust site, and her name would not be
familiar to us all. Would she have been happier? Would the world be a
richer place? I leave it to you to decide.
And yes, there really was a Peter Rabbit who lived to (at least)
the ripe old age of eight, and of whom Beatrix wrote, “Whatever the
limitations of his intellect or outward shortcomings of his fur, and his
ears and toes, his disposition was uniformly amiable and his temper
unfailingly sweet. An affectionate companion and a quiet friend.” And,
for those budding writers experiencing the pain of rejection by editors,
please note that Beatrix self-published the first two editions of The Tale of
Peter Rabbit. (And also note that the word “editor” originally referred to
the person in the Roman Coliseum who gave thumbs up or down to the
hapless gladiators. Luckily, our own editor represents a highly evolved
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version of the species, which is why I’m allowed these parenthetical
musings, and why you should consider submitting your efforts for
publication in the Bulletin.) [Thank you. Also note my extraordinary
tolerance for puns.- Ed.]
Since I started writing this column, fourteen years ago, things
have changed in the world of mushroom-club newsletters, and one of the
major changes is that more and more clubs’ newsletters are now on line.
This means that I no longer have unique access to classified information
(or at least not much); it’s all out there for you to see without my
interpretations and interpolations (spoiler alert: I use them only as
jumping off sites anyway). So may I suggest that you familiarize
yourself with a few well chosen websites? I’ve already sent out a pdf file
of one issue of Newfoundland’s Omphalina, which is informative,
idiosyncratic (a big plus in my book) and gorgeous, and you can access
all its issues via the Canadian electronic archives at: http://epe.lac-
bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/omphalina/index.html. The North American
Mycological Association’s newsletter, The Mycophile, is archived at:
http://www.namyco.org/publications/mycophile/myco.html. And that’s
just for starters.
There’s been a lot of rain recently, which is a big change from
our earlier long dry period and its subsequent lack of fleshy fungi. But
I’ve tried to keep in mind what a British mycologist said a while back;
that when you don’t have the charismatic (and delicious) megafungi
grabbing your eye, your attention can go to the smaller and less dramatic
fungi that you might not otherwise notice. There is always something
out there. As Joseph Wood Krutch once said, "The rare moment is not
the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment
when we are capable of seeing." I confess however, that worthy
statement notwithstanding, I’m still hoping for delicious basketfuls this
fall.
18
GABOR MISKOLCZY
(1933-2012) The BMC is sad to report the death of Gabor Miskolczy, a long-time
member of the club. He died at age 79, surrounded by his family, at Emerson
Hospital in Concord, MA, after a 2-week battle with anaplasmosis, an acute
infection caused by a deer tick bite. Gabor was born in Hungary and came to Woods Hole, MA as a
teenager in 1949.
He graduated from Philips Exeter Academy and then went to Harvard
University and the University of Toronto where he received his B. A. Sc. in
mechanical engineering, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he
earned his S. M. in Mechanical Engineering. In his career, he specialized in heat
transfer and direct energy conversion (thermionics) research. The research
focused on fuel conservation in energy intensive industries, power plants, and
space power systems. He wrote numerous papers in these fields and earned 8
patents.
Gabor moved to Carlisle in 1966 and became active in town affairs.
Perhaps his favorite activity was being the only embattled Hungarian in the
Carlisle Minuteman Company, marching since 1975 with his signature 2-prong
pitchfork in place of a musket.
He was an avid outdoorsman and athlete, a skier, hiker, cyclist,
swimmer, and runner (an annual finisher in the Falmouth Road Race until 2011).
He commuted to work by bicycle (26 miles round trip), rode time trials with
NEBC (New England Bicycle Club) on Saturdays and the annual bike race up Mt.
Washington in September. As a sailor, who completed the Bermuda race, he won
the "Wooly Cup" for best beard. He was a windsurfer and an enthusiastic
member of the Boston Mycological Club. Music and theater were a large part of
his life. He had a discerning palate and enviable appetite. "Dessert first" was his
motto. Trick-or-treaters will remember his unusual Halloween costumes. He was
a curious and perceptive world traveler, whether for business or pleasure and
shared his observations with wry humor and insight.
Diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2003, he immediately
volunteered for every study he qualified for including: pharmaceutical trials;
psychological studies (Parkinson's and depression); exercise; music and
Parkinson's exercises (Sargent College); toxic substances and Parkinson's as well
as being an annual demonstration subject for Harvard Medical school students.
Our condolences to his wife of 47 years, sculptor Bonnie Orr Miskolczy,
(also a BMC member) and daughter Marta Meigs Miskolczy of Colorado.
19
Club Officers
President Susan Goldhor (617) 492-4252
Vice President Pam Chamberlain (617) 864-2992
Treasurer Joel Kershner (617) 566-4890
Recording Secretary Jason Karakehian (617) 254-7195
Corresponding Secretary Marcia Jacob (617) 471-1093
Executive Committee: George Davis (978) 368-1846
Doug Brown (978) 568-3629
Jeanne Peterson (617) 492-0595
Membership Secretary Katie Behrmann
Foray Coordinator Doug Brown (978) 568-3629
Scientific Advisor Dr. Donald Pfister
Farlow Herbarium and Library
22 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138-2094
Website Administrator Jeramy Webb (617) 875 -8886
Website Editor Andrea Ignatoff
Bulletin Editor Marshall Deutsch
41 Concord Road
Sudbury, MA 01776-2328
(978) 443-5837; fax 443-3072
Bulletin Editor Emeritus Moselio Schaechter
6345 Rockhurst Dr.
San Diego, CA 92120-3802
Editorial Correspondents Kay Fairweather, Susan Goldhor,
Marcia Jacob, Lawrence Millman,
Laura Reiner, George Riner
For Information on Club Activities
http://www.bostonmycologicalclub.org