Triumph of the Undead

Bruce Rinker
Bruce Rinker

This is the triumphant season of the undead.

Now that summer is behind us and fall has begun, a change in the calendar also portends drizzle, cooler temperatures, and nutrient-rich soils: ideal conditions for the emergence of fungi.  Although looking a lot like plants and acting a lot like animals, fungi are neither but rather are classified in their own kingdom of life as the world’s most famous (and infamous) decomposers.  At this time of the year, they seem to rise up spontaneously from lawns, forest floors, playgrounds, and even cemeteries as ghostly apparitions of an ancient and inexorable life force.

The Appalachian Mountains represents one of the most biologically diverse regions in the United States because of its venerable age, numerous ecological niches, and abundant rainfall.  This region is noted for its incomparable beauty, especially for its autumn colors.  It is also home for more than 1500 species of fungi.

Destroying angels, chanterelles, stinkhorns, jack-o-lanterns, milkcaps, corals, puffballs, witches’ butter, morels, boletes, fairy rings, and much more: altogether, a phantasmagoric display of form and function among the region’s mycoflora.  They are the fireworks in a rotting world.

Where in the world do they all come from?  In short, from spores.  That bewildering display of colors and shapes, known as mushrooms, represents what we scientists delicately call the fungi’s fruiting bodies.  Many (but not all) mushrooms show an umbrella-like form and radiating plate-like gills beneath the cap.  From those ripe caps pour countless microscopic cells called spores.  In a sense, spores are to mushrooms what seeds are to flowering plants.  When a single-celled spore germinates, it produces thread-like filaments called hyphae that then branch out into the surrounding soil, leaf litter, and wood.  The hyphae secrete digestive juices that break down organic matter and next slurp the released nutrients.  Hyphae then are the ever-absorbing fingers of the undead that turn rot into loamy richness.  When growing conditions are good, little knots of hyphae intermingle in ways we still don’t understand to produce the caps and stems of mushrooms in near-phallic parody.

Despite all their charms and curiosities, however, fungi are not to be toyed with, not to be treated disrespectfully.  This is the price we pay for their valued services to the natural world.  Some mushrooms are edible, but others are deadly poisonous or cause unworldly hallucinations.  The destroying angel is so deadly, in fact, that a single spore on a finger used to rub an eye can germinate on the eye’s surface and literally consume it, causing painful and permanent blindness to its victim if left untreated.

But their benefits far outweigh their horrors.  Fungi soften the heartwood of trees, enabling woodpeckers to excavate nest cavities.  Fungi provide tasty foods for deer and rodents.  Fungi help to enhance the fertility of soils.  They even partner with the roots of many trees in a mutual frenzy of recycling.  As decomposers and parasites, fungi are vital components of every food web here in the Roanoke Valley.  Unless you’re an expert, you should never eat wild fungi but appreciate them – indeed, thank them – for all the services they provide to our environment.

So, as the season cools and the undead arise from a rotting world to greet an autumn sky, let’s remember our own place in the economy of nature: stewards of an ancient and complex world that displays its wonders both above – and below ground.

By H. Bruce Rinker, Ph.D.
Science Department Chairman
North Cross School
[email protected]

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