Mushaboom (#129)

Kickstarting Spooky Science 2024 with a visit to the forest floors - and the fearful creatures that lurk there.

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Spooky Science is an annual feature at Campfire Notebook that examines all manner of creepy curiosities in the world of science and SciArt. To check out the previous years’ features, check out the listing at the bottom of the post.

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A single Bolete nestled into soft moss in a forest last weekend. (Photo: Author, 2024.)

I despise mushrooms.

This animosity for the Kingdom Fungi used to be reserved for food. As a young girl in the 1980s, there wasn’t a can of Campbell’s Soup that didn’t make its way into our pantry; between providing the glue for all manner of hash brown-laced casseroles, and providing rapid sustenance needed before running out the door to dance or basketball or Girl Guides, it was a fixture of our grocery list. The worst of these “flavours” was the thick, salinated sludge dotted with pencil erasers called “Cream of Mushroom”.

Soon, though, I would long for those halcyon days of “Soylent Cream”. Canned mushrooms, with their rubbery texture and taste of bitter topsoil, inexplicably found their way into every dish. I suppose it was cheap filler; maybe money was tight. Certainly, there was no nutritional value or aesthetic enjoyment to be had. I’d munch slowly and solemnly at these meals, staring into the middle distance, dreaming of dry, arid paradises that never once fruited a fungi.¹

If I had this appear on my body, I would remove it post-haste. Then cauterize the area with a flamethrower for good measure. While not an edible chanterelle (bearing instead the name False Chanterelle or Jack-O’Lantern mushroom), why would you rush to eat any versions of this? (Photo: Author, 2024.)

So when people muse about a potential apocalypse, I’m not afraid of the food. I’ve eaten far worse than meagre dehydrated MREs or tinned vegetables. I have glimpsed into darker realms than that.

No. I’m afraid of the other role fungi could play in an apocalypse: The one where they cause our destruction.

A tiny growth of Dacrymyces palmatus, a.k.a. Orange Jelly, on a fallen cedar. This otherworldly species prefers the softer woods over hardwoods, covering the surface with ripples of malevolent marmalade. (Photo: Author, 2024)

I’ve tried identifying this beast, but no luck thus far. Which is okay, because it doesn’t need a name to haunt my dreams. (Photo: Author, 2024).

Although I fight nigh daily with a bothersome herd of white-tailed deer in my yard - shaving bars of soap onto my plants to dissuade them from mowing down every scrap of hosta around my house - they have yet to turn their interest towards me. Maybe they would turn carnivorous in a world-ending situation, but I’m betting that there’s enough cedars to satiate their cravings.

Some mushrooms, though, can operate on the same principle as a virus. Seek a host, drain their lifeforce, force them to behave out of character but wholly in service to spawning more mushrooms, and repeat.

These examples I find terrifying: No longer in charge of limbs, minds; soon becoming a planter for fungal fruit to finally burst through bodies, showering hapless passerby in infinite microscopic tiny mushroom embryos to repeat the cycle.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, otherwise known as cordyceps or zombie-ant fungus, infects insects such as ants or spiders. Like other parasites, cordyceps drains its host completely of nutrients before filling its body with spores that will let the fungus reproduce. It then compels the insect to seek height and remain there before it expels these spores, infecting other nearby insects in the process.²

Currently (thankfully), this is still the stuff of science fiction: The adaptations needed for a fungus to jump from insects to humans is quite significant; our body temperature is high enough and our immune system sophisticated enough to annihilate the fungus.

For now.

After all, climate change is causing many species - indeed, all of us, even the fast of us - to adapt or perish, and Fungi are no different.

In the meantime - and if it wasn’t abundantly clear already - I will pass on the stuffed mushroom apps at your next event.³

I believe a version of Fomes excavatus, known more broadly by the equally unappealing name, Hoof Fungus, for its’ resemblance to a horse hoof. Not to be confused with Chaga, the other shelf fungus ingested by many for its’ immune-boosting properties. (Photo: Author, 2024)

From what limited information I could find, I believe this is a type of Marasmius. It was nestled into the mosses all on its’ own, but this whole innocence act ain’t fooling me. (Photo: Author, 2024)

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Spooky Science Library

2022

Fire extinguisher bombs | Body hacking | The case of Little Albert | Old pharmacy recipes

2023

Healing soups | Electroshock therapy | Disease make-up | Blood as art

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1. I’ve never (willingly) eaten a mushroom since my teenage years. The argument being thus: Why would I willingly eat something that, if it appeared on my body, I’d run to the doctor for an ointment or surgical means?

2. Heyward, G. (2023, January). The zombie fungus from 'The Last Of Us' is real — but not nearly as deadly. NPR.

3. The irony here being, I love bread and it’s only here because of a fungus, yeast. But it doesn’t taste like fungus, you know? So I’m willing to make a concession here.