The white dapperling – a mushroom that isn’t poisonous…

Fungi are remarkable organisms, essential for the recycling of nutrients by breaking down detritus. Most of us recognise mushrooms and toadstools – the fruiting bodies of many fungi – but we are less familiar with the huge numbers of wind-borne spores that they produce. Should the spores land in a suitable location, a complex mat of hyphae (threads that form the mycelium) then spreads underground, or through other substrata, using enzymes to digest organic matter and promote further growth. Mostly, the mycelium is also a mystery to us, but we know that the fruiting bodies must have grown from something because they don’t have roots. We can only speculate on how the fascinating life cycle of fungi evolved [1] and how the hyphae became organised for their various functions, including the rapid growth of fruiting bodies.

Last week, two unusual mushrooms appeared overnight on our lawn. They were white, with white spore-bearing gills and each appeared to grow from a bag-like structure around the base of the stem. They intrigued me sufficiently to pick one and take photographs of it (see below). Like many of us, I am aware that some mushrooms are highly toxic [1], so I treated the specimen I picked with caution. Fortunately, our local garage has a free supply of plastic gloves to prevent contact between hands and petrol, and I donned some of these (previously purloined for use in the age of COVID-19) to avoid direct contact. Even so, I washed my hands several times when I came back into the house (also a COVID-19 habit) as I was sure there was a possibility it was one of the deadly forms [1].

I needed help with identification and put the images on the Facebook page of the British Mycological Society. Fortunately, one of the members, Geoffrey Kibby, a well-known expert, suggested that my mushroom might be a specimen of Leucoagaricus leucothites that is common in lawns and which may cause gastrointestinal upsets in some humans, but is considered edible by others [2]. It seems I was being over-cautious.

Being a romantic, I was fascinated by the common name of “our” mushroom - the white dapperling – and that started me thinking once again about the common names that we give organisms [3]. Fungi are a rich source of such names and some are wonderfully descriptive, as a scan of any field guide will show. Some common names are connected to folklore, as mushrooms and toadstools have always fascinated us, and we have projected all manner of attributes to different types. As a result, common names are easy to remember and are used when we chat about mushrooms and toadstools, although many species are known only by their official name. Here is an abbreviated list taken from two of the best guides [4,5] together with the Latin binomial for each (some of which change from time to time) [3]:

Old Man of the Woods – Strobilomyces floccopus

Slippery Jack – Suillus luteus

Penny Bun – Boletus edulis

Slimy Spike Cap – Gomphidius glutinosus

Caesar’s Mushroom – Amanita caesarea

Death Cap – Amanita phalloides

Destroying Angel – Amanita virosa

The Blusher – Amanita rubescens

Stinking Parasol – Lepiota cristata

Amethyst Deceiver – Laccaria amethystea

Tawny Funnel Cap – Clitocybe flaccida

Clustered Tough Shank - Collibia confluens

Poached Egg Fungus – Oudemansiella mucida

Herald of the Winter – Hygrophorus hypothejus

Curry-scented Milk Cap – Lactarius camphoratus

The Charcoal Burner – Russula cyanoxantha

The Sickener – Russula emetica

Poison Pie – Hebeloma crustuliniforme

Lawyer’s Wig – Coprinus comatus

Fairies’ Bonnets – Coprinus disseminatus

Weeping Widow – Lacrymaria velutina

Chicken of the Woods – Laetiporus sulphureus

Witches’ Butter – Exidia plana

Jelly Babies – Leotia lubrica

Great names for fascinating organisms, aren’t they?

P.S. I wonder where the fruiting body that produced the spores that resulted in "our" white dapperlings was located?

[1] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2014/02/mushrooms-tasty-hallucinogenic-and.html

[2] https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~biodiv/mushroom/L_leucothites.html

[3]

https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/05/latin-binomials-and-beauty-of-common.html

[4] Stefan Buczacki (1992) Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and Europe. London, HarperCollins.

[5] Roger Phillips (1994) Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe. London, Macmillan.

COVID 19 – and more bad press for bats

In an earlier blog post [1], I asked the question “What’s not to like about bats?”. Accepting that bats are not universally popular, I pointed out that, for many, they are associated with unpleasantness and feature in several stories about witches. This is illustrated in the frightening image of Goya’s Witches’ Sabbath, where bats fly over the witches’ heads as they worship the devil in the form of a goat (see below, with detail).

Further in the blog post [1], I wrote:

This association with the “dark world” stems from the crepuscular and nocturnal habits of bats, and our nervousness about what happens during darkness – a “fear of the night” and anxiety about the possible presence of evil spirits. There is also something about the rapid flight of bats that some find disturbing and one belief is that they can become entangled in hair. ..A further prominent feature of folklore is that bat blood, or other extracts from the animals, cure eye diseases; arising, no doubt, from the ability of bats to be active in darkness.

We can now add another negative to the reputation of these fascinating mammals with the discovery that bats may be the source of the COVID19 global pandemic. In a paper published in The Lancet [2], Lu et al. write:

..on the basis of current data, it seems likely that the 2019-nCoV causing the Wuhan outbreak might also be initially hosted by bats, and might have been transmitted to humans via currently unknown wild animal(s) sold at the Huanan seafood markets.

One suggested intermediary is the pangolin, but other animals present in the market are more likely. But then, what if some of the Huanan stallholders knew of the folklore that bat blood aids the cure of eye diseases and rubbed infected bat blood into their eyes? This practice was known from Ancient Egypt, but mythologies travel. We will probably never know if this happened, but I hope that one of the solutions to our problems with this coronavirus is not the attempted extermination of bats, when the pandemic almost certainly results from the activities of humans.

[1] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2014/04/whats-not-to-like-about-bats.html

[2] Roujian Lu + 34 co-authors (2020) Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding. The Lancet 395:565-574.

Mermen and mermaids

Creatures with a human torso and a fish tail have appeared in the folklore and mythology of many cultures. ¹ We know them as mermen and mermaids and examples became a popular feature of travelling shows and museums, Henry Gosse describing his great disappointment, as a boy, to discover the advertised mermaid was “a shrivelled and blackened little thing which might have been moulded in mud for aught I could see”. ¹ It must have looked a little like the specimen shown below.

Frank Buckland, like Gosse an eminent writer and lecturer on Natural History, describes the body of merman he saw exhibited in London: ²

In the back parlour of the White Hart, Vine-court, Spitalfields, high and dry upon a deal board, lay this wonderful object - hideous enough to excite the wonder of the credulous, and curious enough to afford a treat to the naturalist. Such a thing as a merman or mermaid of course never really existed; I was therefore most anxious to examine its composition, which, by the kindness of the landlady (a remarkably civil woman), who removed the glass that covered her treasure, I was enabled to do. The creature (a gentleman, not a lady specimen of the tribe) was from three to four feet long. The upper part of its body was composed of the head, arms and trunk of a monkey, and the lower part of a fish, which appeared to me to be a common hake; and the head was really a wonderful composition: the parchment-like hideous ears stood well forward, the skin of the nose when soft had been moulded into a decided specimen of “the snub,” the forehead was wrinkled into a frown, and the mouth “grinned a ghastly grin;” the curled lips partly concealed a row of teeth, which in the upper jaw were of conical form and sharp-pointed, taken probably from the head of a hake, whose body formed the lower part of our specimen. the lower jaw contained these fish’s teeth, but conspicuously in front was inserted a human incisor or front tooth, and a vacant cavity showed that there once had been a pair of them. These were probably placed there to show the “real human nature” of the monster. The head had once been covered with hair; but visitors, anxious to obtain a lock of a merman’s hair, had so plucked his unfortunate wig that only a few scattered hairs remained: the relic-seekers are now, therefore, ignorantly treasuring in their cabinets [of curiosities] hairs from the pate of an old red monkey.

Buckland also examined a mermaid, about “half the size of her partner”. It, too, was formed from a monkey and a fish, but this time with glass doll’s eyes rather than the leather ones of the merman, that had pupils marked in black ink.

The popularity of such exhibits waned in the mid-Nineteenth Century and Buckland comments “The good folks of England are getting every year more and more educated, and mermaids do not take so well now as formerly..”. ² The legendary P. T. Barnum advertised the mermaid in his museum with a highly imaginative painting to attract in customers. Of course, he knew the exhibit was not a mermaid and “Mr Barnum confessed that he did not pursue his studies in Natural History too far, or he might learn too much.” ² Barnum justified the confidence trick by making no extra charge and there were many other things for visitors to see. He was a showman after all.

Any Natural Historian would see immediately that these exhibited mermen and mermaids were manufactured, yet reports of these creatures in their natural environment have been made by generations of sailors. These may have been sightings of sea mammals, especially manatees (left, below) and dugongs (right, below). One can only conclude that they were distant sightings to merit the belief that they were mermen or mermaids, or perhaps the sailors had been too long at sea and their imaginations had become overdeveloped?

Although no-one can believe in their existence in the real world, mermaids have had a lasting appeal in fiction, film and other media. After all, they come from another world and thus fit into the niche also occupied by angels, fairies and dragons. The best known story is The Little Mermaid by H C Andersen ³ and this formed the basis for the Disney film of the same name. Andersen describes how mermaids lived at the bottom of the ocean and had a class system, with at least one Royal Family that had six Princesses:

The whole day long they used to play in the palace, down in the great halls where live flowers grew on the walls. Whenever the high amber windows were thrown open the fish would swim in, just as swallows dart into our rooms when we open the windows. But these fish, now, would swim right up to the little princesses to eat out of their hands and let themselves be petted.. .. Each little princess had her own small garden plot, where she could dig and plant whatever she liked..

The story continues by describing how the princesses were allowed to swim to the surface of the ocean for the first time on their fifteenth birthday, reporting back on what each had seen. The youngest princess heard all the amazing descriptions, but had to wait and wait for her turn. When the day came and she arrived at the surface, she saw a handsome prince and rescued him from drowning after he became unconscious. The mermaid princess wanted to marry the prince, not only for love, but also to acquire immortality of the soul, as this was a feature of humans that mermaids lacked, but which could be acquired through marriage. The transformation from fish tail into “props” (legs) required a special potion prepared by an underwater witch - who improbably boiled the ingredients in “a caldron over the flames”. ³ The famous statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen celebrates the transition to props from the fish tail and that explains why it appears like a nude of the period, with the outline of the tail barely visible. In the Disney film, which uses only superficial features of the complex story told by Andersen, the youngest princess appears as a mermaid Barbie Doll, with what appears to be a pull-on lower fish section and discretion maintained by having a bikini top.

One’s rational side finds all this a bit much, but the mermaids and mermen in museums, side shows and literature are very obviously fantasy creatures and we can all enjoy that. In a wider context, there must be other imaginary things that we take to be real, but it is not always easy to see that this is so. Hopefully, Natural Historians are better able to differentiate the two, just as Barnum intimated.

¹ Philip Henry Gosse (1861) The Romance of Natural History, Second Series. London, James Nisbet and Co..

² Francis T Buckland (1860) Curiosities of Natural History Second Series. New York, Rudd & Carlton.

³ Hans Christian Andersen (1837) Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/forskning/bib/bfn/vis.html?p=303&show=1

Watching azure damsels

It’s the time of year in the UK when dragonflies and damselflies are emerging. The margins of ponds, streams and lakes start to harbour blue, red or other coloured damselflies, while their larger and variously coloured relatives, the dragonflies, fly over the water searching for prey insects. Yesterday, I was visiting ponds in Norfolk and came across many azure damselflies (Coenagrion puella), the bodies of males being a striking combination of blue and black, with the females rather duller (despite their common name, there are male and female damselflies). They were flying around the vegetation and occasionally perching and it was clear that some were newly emerged from the ponds where they had been living as larvae since last summer, as their colours had not developed fully. One adult, just minutes after emerging, became the victim of a spider, which grabbed the damselfly resting on a plant stem and took it to the base of the plant to be devoured later. A piece of “raw” Nature and one that reminded me that my love of watching damselflies and dragonflies is based on my very partial knowledge of how Nature really is, as well my aesthetic appreciation of the insects.

Dragonflies and damselflies (I’ll call them Odonata, as that is the name for the Order) are beautiful to look at, and are very well engineered, but that is not for my benefit. They have existed in much the same form as we see them today for well over 100 million years. We cannot comprehend such a period of time, but we are fairly sure that there were no humans for 99.8% of the time that the contemporary Odonata have been in existence. It is quite extraordinary to know that all the stages of their evolution, from a single cell to the complex insects we know today, occurred way before 100 million years ago: the development through larval stages, with moults to increase size; the ability to fly and change direction rapidly; the development of excellent vision; the different catching devices of larvae and adults. I could go on and on in making a list of features and they were all in place so very long ago, with the successful pattern being repeated through more than 100 million generations. Of course, there are some who cannot accept this view and among the more famous of these was Philip Henry Gosse, the excellent Victorian Natural Historian and author of Omphalos, ¹ in which he explained that Creation occurred as described literally in the Holy Bible, over a period of days. To him, fossils (including those of the Odonata, some of which are of much larger forms than are found today) were part of that Creation and it is a view which is still held by some. 

The folklore surrounding damselflies and dragonflies is even more odd than the explanations provided by Creationists like Gosse. As their common name might suggest, it is the dragonflies, rather than their smaller and more delicate relatives, the damselflies, which feature in most folklore.  A review is given in Spinning Jenny and Devil’s Darning Needle by M. Jill Lucas ² and the title of her book gives us a clue of what is to come. She has researched information from around the World and found that dragonflies may be associated with death (by them breathing on us, or by their sting - although the insects do not exhale and cannot sting) and they might be used by the Devil to “weigh people’s souls”. For those who enjoy fishing, the insects are a sign of good luck or bad luck depending on one’s country and, despite their negative religious associations, are regarded generally as being tokens of good luck, whether one is fishing or not.  In contrast, these “Devil’s Darning Needles” may stitch up the mouths of children who tell lies, the mouths of noisy persons, or the toes of those who sleep with their feet uncovered. It's all very confusing and there is much more on folklore in Jill Lucas’ book, which also covers the position accorded to dragonflies and damselflies in the Arts and as illustrations on stamps. It is well worth reading and shows us both the way in which the insects are appreciated and how extraordinary are our imaginations in making interpretations of the unknown.

I have always spent time watching damselflies and dragonflies. From childhood, it was something that I loved doing and, together with looking at wild flowers and collecting animals and plants from rock pools and streams, was part of my early interest in Natural History. As I describe in Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts,³ the Odonata even became the subject of my undergraduate research project. Is it possible to have a favourite species? Probably not, as they are all beautiful and one cannot separate the insects from their location, which might be magical in the scented evening of a balmy summer’s day. However, if I had to make a choice, it would be the Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans) flitting over reeds. If I didn’t know better, I could believe that it was created just to give me pleasure and a sense of wonder.

¹ Philip Henry Gosse (1857) Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot. London, John Van Voorst.

² M. Jill Lucas (2002) Spinning Jenny and Devil’s Darning Needle. Bradford, Wheelden Print.

³ Roger S. Wotton (2012) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. Southampton, Clio Publishing.

Wart cures and our powers of imagination

One of my strong memories of early childhood was the appearance of a wart on the side of my left hand. I wasn’t very concerned, although I was intrigued to know what it was. No information was forthcoming and, as is usually the case with the skin eruptions caused by these viral infections, it disappeared after a few weeks. However, that was not before my parents had rubbed a piece of raw meat on the wart and then buried the meat in the front garden. We were a church-going and Christian family and, as there is no reference to cures for warts in The Bible, my parents tried the folk cure instead of buying some proprietary product. I don’t think they believed it would work and, as I was a rather serious child, it is likely that they rubbed the wart with meat as a light-hearted way of preventing me from becoming anxious. But what an odd superstition, or is it?

I turned to Steve Roud’s book The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland ¹ to look up cures for warts and was surprised to see that there were 31 separate entries. There is just as rich a series of explanations for the appearance of warts on the hand, the commonest of which being that they result from washing the hands in water that has been used to boil eggs...... 

Here is a brief summary of the list of “wart cures” in Roud’s book:

1. Wash the wart with animal blood; that of pigs, moles, mice and cats being mentioned

2. Cut an apple in two, rub on the wart, tie both halves together and bury the apple

3. Rub the wart with a broad bean pod (or dandelion) and then bury it

4. Wash each wart with water from a blacksmith’s forge

5. Rub the wart with stolen bread and bury it

6. Get someone to buy the wart i.e. selling it to someone causes its removal

7. Bury a celandine plant, dig it up after three days and squeeze the plant juice on the wart

8. Place single grains of wheat (or barley) on each wart then either bury them or collect them in a bag and leave on a road for others to find

9. “Charm” by looking at the warts or at a picture of the person with warts, usually accompanied by some words

10. Pick a cinder for each wart from the previous day’s fire, place it (them) into a bag and throw it away

11. Count warts and tell a charmer (person with special skills in “magic”) the number

12. Rub warts with sap from dandelions

13. Cut off the head of an eel, rub it on the wart(s) and bury it

14. Cut notches in an elder stick (Sambucus sp.), one for each wart, and rub on the wart(s)

15. Rub the wart with “fasting saliva”, i.e. saliva from someone who has not eaten for some time

16. Rub the wart(s) as a funeral procession passes by, to transfer the warts to the corpse

17. Tie a hair (usually horsehair) around the wart

18. Rub a wetted match (the non-safety variety) on each wart

19. Rub the wart with meat, which has preferably been stolen.

20. Wash the hands in moonlight or use earth gathered from under the foot at the time of the New Moon

21. Touch the warts with a pin and either bury it or leave it at a crossroads

22. Rub the wart with a raw potato and bury it

23. Prick a snail once for each wart and then rub it on the wart(s), afterwards impaling it on a blackthorn bush

24. Wash the hands with washing soda [sodium carbonate]

25. Touch the wart with the sap of spurge plants (Euphorbia spp.)

26. Cut notches into a stick, one for each wart, then bury the stick (see cure 14 above)

27. Touch each wart with a stone from a brook, tie the stones into a bag and throw them away at a crossroads

28. Use straw, reeds or rushes to touch warts and either bury them or throw them away

29. Touch each wart with a knot tied into a piece of string, one for each wart, and throw the string away where it can decompose

30. Rub warts with a toad and then impale the toad on a thorn bush

31. Bathe warts in water which has gathered after rain in a hollow on a stone or tree stump

Further information on these cures is given in Gabrielle Hatfield’s little book Warts: Summary of Wart-cure Survey for the Folklore Society ² that gives even more examples than those presented by Roud. She also mentions cures of similar kinds to those used in the British Isles from Greece, Slavic countries and Belgium, so the folk cures were widely founded through Europe and beyond.

Common themes in all cures were rubbing with plants, animals or their parts (often accompanied by burial, impaling or throwing away the item used), rubbing with minerals or mineral solutions, and the buying, selling and “charming” of warts. Here is a summary of the most popular recommended cures recorded in the survey (with percentages by category and of the total responses recorded):

Plants

Broad beans                                             19.4% of plants               5.5% of total
Dandelions                                               15.7% of plants                4.4% of total
Greater celandines                                     8.2% of plants                2.3% of total
Spurge                                                       6.7% of plants                1.9% of total

Others                                                      50.0% of plants              14.0% of total

Animals (and animal parts)

Raw meat                                                  41.7% of animals           13.6% of total
Spit                                                            10.2% of animals            3.4% of total
Tying with horse hair                                     9.6% of animals            3.1% of total
Tying with other threads                                8.3% of animals            2.7% of total
Snail slime                                                    7.7% of animals            2.5% of total

 

Others                                                        22.4% of animals            7.3% of total

Minerals

Washing soda                                             24.1% of minerals            4.6% of total
Vinegar                                                       13.2% of minerals            2.5% of total
Ink                                                               7.7% of minerals             1.5% of total
Bleach                                                          4.4% of minerals             0.8% of total

Others                                                        50.5% of minerals             9.6% of total

Buying, selling and “charming”

 

Selling for a small sum                                 14.5% of charming           2.9% of total
Counting by another                                    13.5% of charming           2.7% of total
Wrapping stones in a bag                              9.4% of charming            1.9% of total
Looking at the moon                                     6.3% of charming            1.3% of total

Others                                                         56.3% of charming          11.3% of total

A close look at this Table (with apologies for the formatting) shows the treatment of my wart by rubbing with meat is easily the commonest folk cure, followed by rubbing with broad beans, washing soda and dandelions. Cures using products from Nature dominate, with “charming” in all its forms only making up 20% of the total. “Charming” is based solely on imagination and there is no basis for it having any effect but, as warts on the hands may disappear almost as quickly as they arrive, it is easy for some to believe in its role. 

Some of the natural products used as cures may contain anti-viral agents that hasten the removal of the wart and, as Hatfield states: “If one is tempted to dismiss as fantastic many of these wart cures, it has to be pointed out that at least some of them have been tried and tested and found to work. To separate the ‘faith-healing’ aspect from the physiologically active ingredients is a difficult if not an impossible task.. ..The employment of ritual to accompany any healing method for any illness can obviously be important; faith in any medicine, official or otherwise, is an important part of the cure, and presumably evokes the body’s own healing powers.”

The powers of human belief shown by all the variants of cures we have discovered, or invented, for just one ailment are impressive. Our powers of trial and error, of imagination, and of the use of natural live and dead materials are almost endless. But where does imagination end and reality begin? It’s a question which has a wide application - from wart cures, through “alternative therapies” and into religious beliefs.

                                   

¹ Steve Roud (2003) The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. London: Penguin Books.

² Gabrielle Hatfield (1998) Warts: Summary of Wart-cure Survey for the Folklore Society. London: The Folklore Society.

Image from:

http://img.webmd.com/dtmcms/live/webmd/consumer_assets/site_images/articles/health_tools/adult_skin_problems_slideshow/phototake_rm_hand_warts.jpg