Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere
Huitlacoche (pronounced weet-la-KOH-chay) is a fungus, called corn smut in the US.
"Before, it was seen as a food of the poor. Now it's the food of the rich," said Raul Nieto Angel, the dean of the crop sciences department at the university, which extensively tests and researches huitlacoche.
by Phil Lachman
The photo above shows a lovely group of mushrooms nestled against the trunk of a eucalyptus tree. The association between the fungi and the tree however is no accident.
Photo: Caren Alpert
A scanning electron microscope image (500X) of the mold found outside the Hiram Walker Distillery.
The air outside a distillery warehouse smells like witch hazel and spices, with notes of candied fruit and vanilla—warm and tangy- mellow. It’s the aroma of fresh cookies cooling in the kitchen while a fancy cocktail party gets out of hand in the living room.
James Scott encountered that scent for the first time a decade ago in a town called Lakeshore, Ontario. Just across the river from Detroit, Lakeshore is where barrels of Canadian Club whiskey age in blocky, windowless warehouses. Scott, who had recently completed his PhD in mycology at the University of Toronto, had launched a business called Sporometrics. Run out of his apartment, it was a sort of consulting detective agency for companies that needed help dealing with weird fungal infestations. The first call he got after putting up his website was from a director of research at Hiram Walker Distillery named David Doyle.
"Cedar apple rust? A strange name for a fungus which affects the juniper, you might think. Yet cedar apple rust is so named because it is a disease which requires two hosts to complete its life cycle. To begin with it will spend the winter as a purple colored gall which looks a little like a brain on the branches of Juniperus virginiana....Although the glutinous orange mass looks deadly it does not kill either the juniper or its secondary hosts. However, it will infect apples and will also defoliate the trees so whenever farmers discover it, they will naturally attempt to eradicate it."
