Finding Hidden Treasures in the Cedar Swamp

by Nina Munteanu

It was early winter, before the snows, as I entered the large cedar swamp-forest and felt magic touch my shoulder.

It wasn’t just the deep soggy forest and the twittering birds or the fresh pungent smell of cedar in the air. Or the lanky trees creaking in the warm wind. There was something in the air that stirred my senses. The magic of discovery.

Amid the soft hush of the breeze through the leaves, the tall trees leaned into each other, groaning and clanking like whispering gossips. Moss crept up their widely planted feet. It carpeted the russet duff on the ground with splashes of fluorescent green. Several over two-hundred-year old cedars had fallen and their decaying bodies were feeding a whole new generation of trees. Cedars growing on cedars. I left the path and climbed onto a several metre-wide and twenty-metre long moss-covered cedar corpse. My steps sprang over spongy ground—now a mixture of rich soil, decaying wood, fungus and detritus. I could make out the black fibrous layers of decaying wood beneath a carpet of moss and dead leaves.
 

I’ve been told that the heartwood of eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) is highly resistant to moisture, decay and insect infestation due to the phytoncides (oils and acids) it produces; it’s these compounds that give off its distinctive pleasant and calming aroma. Many of the compounds are variants of thujone and include alpha pinene, alpha thujone, beta thujone, bornyl acetate, camphene, camphone, delta sabinene, fenchone and terpinenol.

A fallen cedar can remain intact, slowly decomposing on the forest floor for over a century. This is due to its natural preservative that is toxic to decay-causing fungi. Nursery logs provide rich habitat for seedlings to take root and a complexity of growing plants, fungi, liverworts, and other wildlife to thrive in. These ancient trees play a vital role in climate balance. They store two to three times more carbon than second-growth trees. Because of their slow decay, cedars lock carbon in their biomass for a longer period—creating a slow and efficient carbon store. Even dead snags and nursery logs continue to store carbon as they provide habitat for other living things.

Simply walking in a cedar forest can directly boost your health by breathing in its aerosols: cedar oils (terpenes) help boost our immune systems; cedars have anti-oxidant compounds and anti-inflammatory compounds. You also help your well-being by listening to the forest’s curative infrasounds and other frequencies; they help to quiet your mind. The benefits are numerous: from heightened calmness, creativity and problem solving, greater immunity, to a greater sense of general well-being and overall happiness. When you spend time in the forest, you inhale beneficial bacteria, plant-based essential oils, and negatively charged ions.

The eastern white cedar also contains high amounts of vitamin C (50 mg of vitamin C per 100 grams). Because of this, various parts of the tree (mostly leaves and bark) are used in herbal medicine, mainly for their immune-system stimulating effects. When 16th century explorer Jacques Cartier and his men fell ill with scurvy, the native people helped treat them with a tea from this conifer. The tea is made by dropping several small pieces of cedar leaves into water that has just been boiled and allowed to steep for five to seven minutes then strained into a fresh menthol-aromatic tea.

Curious to taste cedar tea, I convinced good friend Merridy to accompany me on my next excursion to my magic cedar swamp forest in the Trent Nature Sanctuary near Peterborough, Ontario. We collected some fresh leaves from a fairly-young tree then upon returning to Merridy’s place, we boiled some water and cut up the cedar leaves, which gave off a refreshing citrus camphor smell. I dropped the fresh leaves into the pot of boiled water and let it steep for seven minutes then poured the light-coloured tea into two cups. The tea was hardly more than water. There was just the hint of colour, no more. I inhaled the tea and took in a very mild scent of cedar. More like a woodsy smell.

Then we took our first sips. We shared our first impressions: “Tastes like cedar,” said Merridy unceremoniously and gave a short laugh. Then she added, “It has a mild delicate taste.” I was pleasantly surprised at the gentleness of the flavour. The first sip took in subtle notes of the forest with an aftertaste of cedar. The second larger sip yielded more robust citrusy and astringent notes of cedar bark and wood. I could detect the sharper complexity of terpines. It was fresh like a forest breeze in springtime. In short, it was delightful.

Despite its beneficial properties, cedar tea should not be taken in excess. One of the reasons is thujone, a volatile monoterpene ketone with a menthol odour, best known as the chemical compound in the spirit absinthe. The eastern white cedar contains an appreciable amount of thujone (hence the tree’s genus name Thuja). This monoterpene can be toxic to brain, kidney, and liver cells and can cause convulsions if taken in too high a dose. Given its interference with certain neuro-receptors, small doses of thujone may convey stimulating mood-elevating effects. The lesson here is that if you drink cedar tea, do so in moderation. Enjoy its beneficial qualities, but respect its other qualities!

A Puffball Treasure
Back in the cedar swamp forest, I was crawling on the spongy ground, clutching my camera to take some close shots of the bright moss that was fruiting in profusion. Before I knew it, I’d stumbled into the dip between two giant decayed logs. There, like Indiana Jones in the deep jungles of Borneo, I discovered my hidden gold: puffballs!

Dozens of them littered the ground, looking like eggs, as though some puffball-hen had laid them. Whitish, round and with a paper-like texture, each plump spore sac pouted with a beaked mouth (peristome) and sat nested in a star-like “collar” (exoperidium) with decorative cracks and fissures. The puffballs resembled a chorus of singers “oohing”. I identified the puffball as a Collared Earthstar (Gaestrum triplex), a saprobic fungus that commonly grows in humus-rich deciduous/coniferous forests amid leaf litter. The puffballs release their spores when the wind blows past the pointed “mouths” or when they are disturbed by rain or animals—like me. Reverting to a childhood inclination, I poked one with my finger and it released a yellowish-green cloud of spores. I clapped my hands with glee and realized that I’d just opened a door to magic.

 

Then it started to rain. First a light rain that sizzled over the ground and vegetation. Then drumming. And finally pelting. I inhaled the freshness in the air and didn’t mind that I would soon be soaked—my raincoat wasn’t really a raincoat, more like a cheap wannabe. I didn’t mind because the magic was transforming and I was part of it.

With the rain, the greens and russets grew intense. The moss sparkled. The air grew thick with moisture and a mist veiled the forest in soft gossamer. When I looked down at my puffballs, I noticed that the delicate whitish rice-paper spore sacs had transformed into tan-coloured rubber balls that sprang back like pressurized balloons if poked. I would never have imagined this and found myself grinning in the magic of discovery.

 Just as I made to leave this magical cedar swamp forest, I caught sight of what looked like an errant wandering puffball on top of one of the ancient logs. Unlike the others whose spore sacs were nestled in an outer collar, this puffball’s spore sac was perched proudly high, atop a series of ‘legs,’ the rays of the outer peridium. The puffball resembled an octopus standing on its many tentacles. I later identified it as another species of Earthstar, the Beaked Earthstar (Geastrum pectinatum), which likes to live under (and on) conifers.

The puffball looked like it was going on walkabout. Perhaps I would join it.

Fungal Fabric

by Kim Woolcock

The new year makes me think of new beginnings. Why not new bio-inspired technologies?
 

As microplastics clog up our newsfeeds and the biosphere, the search for biodegradable materials becomes more important. One that’s catching my attention is fungal fabric.

Mycena inclinata, Clustered bonnet
Image credit: Stu's Images

When many people think of fungi, they think of mushrooms or mold. Fungi are both of these things, but they are also so much more. The mushrooms that we see popping up in the rainy spring and fall are fruiting bodies, made to distribute spores. They are just the tip of the underground iceberg. Made of tightly intertwined fungal threads called hyphae, they are produced by huge webs of hyphae living invisibly in the soil, in rotting wood, in plant roots and leaves. These hyphae live inside their food, producing enzymes that degrade it, and then soaking up the released nutrients.

 

Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) mycelium growing on coffee grounds in a petri
dish
Image credit: Tobi Kellner

Hyphae can grow to form any shape (just look at the many shapes of mushrooms, from corals to cup fungi to tooth fungi), and dried mushrooms have a tough and rubbery texture. Innovators are leveraging this combination of traits to produce a wide variety of fungal fabrics. The hyphae are like the threads of cloth, interweaving as they grow. This fabric weaves itself!

Starting with waste products like sawdust or grain husks, designers add fungal spores, a small amount of water, and wait for the fungus to devour the food and fill the mold. Fungi grow quickly, so fungal leather can be produced in a matter of weeks. The resulting mat of hyphae can be dried, tanned, and dyed to produce “leather” that is strong, durable, breathable – and beautiful.

Designers are using fungal leather to make watches, purses, clothing, and shoes. Maybe some fashion-forward fungal leather items are just what my new year needs.

 

Love forests? Thank fungus!

At first glance, the mushrooms we see popping up on the forest floor may appear pretty insignificant. They’re lovely, sure, but most are small and rubbery, and they disappear pretty quickly during dry periods.

As it happens though, these little nubbins are crucial to our forests’ very SURVIVAL. How is this possible? Let’s dig a bit deeper. There are thousands of mushroom species, which are part of the Kingdom Fungi. Most live in the soil or on other living things like trees, and they feed mainly on dead matter. Unlike animals, they digest food outside their bodies, using chemicals to break down their meal before consuming it.

Trees and mushrooms help each other. Guess what else they have in common? A fruit to plant ratio!

Yes, some cause disease, but there are so many more helpful mushrooms than harmful ones. Our debt to our fungal friends goes back hundreds of millions of years, when life first started moving out of the oceans and onto land. Plants could not have made that leap without mushrooms first creeping onto the rocks and digesting them into nutrients (i.e. plant food, like phosphorus or magnesium). This allowed plants to move in, dry off, and, over millions of years, diversify into the incredible environments we enjoy today.

There are two main ways that forests STILL depend on mushrooms:

1. Mushrooms decompose dead things. Think of all the leaves that fall and the plants and animals that die in the forest every year. Without decomposers, they would just lie there, eventually piling up enough to smother the forest itself. Luckily, fungi break it all down to nutrients that get recycled back into the forest system, supporting new life. Other critters like worms and beetles decompose dead things too, but — not to play favourites or anything — mushrooms do it the best.
2. Many mushrooms actually feed trees. That seems strange- what could fleshy little mushrooms have to offer towering trees? Here’s the thing: the mushrooms we see are only the reproductive bits attached to the main fungal body — called mycelium — which can be ENORMOUS! They’re similar to apples in this way, they make up just a small part of the entire apple tree.

The mycelium stays mostly out of sight — underground or inside trees — and is made up of thin, quickly-growing strands that look a bit like cobwebs. They can squeeze their way into the tiniest underground nooks and crannies, and are about 100 times better at getting water and nutrients from the soil than are the relatively shorter, stubbier tree roots.

So mushrooms gather water and nutrients for trees and deliver them right to their roots. Why so helpful? Trees give something back! Through photosynthesis, plants take carbon from the atmosphere to make carbohydrates (i.e. sugar), the main building block of plants. Most trees make extra: they give sugar to mushrooms, and mushrooms give water and nutrients to trees — a sweet deal!

These tree-fungal relationships are called mycorrhizae, and they benefit the vast majority of trees and other plants. Often neither the tree nor the mushroom could survive without the other! In harsher environments (like, let’s face it, Canada’s), forests really depend on mushrooms to stay healthy.

And who depends on forests? We all do! For clean air, biodiversity, climate regulation, food, lumber, and medicines to name a few. One thing that’s very clear — we have a lot to thank mushrooms for!

Fungus Photos

 by Jan Thornhill

[Today's post is based on some images and captions by Jan Thornhill. Her studies of fungus lead her to make photographs with surprising colours and textures! There are spores and bracket fungus and more.]

 

 

I found a new hen-of-the-woods (Grifola frondosa) fungus growing at the base of a tree, and took a quick location pic so I'd be able to find the same tree again next year. (My criteria for this location pic are: identifiable mushroom in foreground and, in the background, a fallen-tree-on-the-embankment landmark). Then I downloaded what I think is easily the best hen picture I've ever taken. I wish I'd had something to do with it!  

Here is Rhodofomes cajanderi, one of 2 pink-pored shelf fungi in Ontario (the other is R. rosea). Both are uncommon where I live. I can't get over the colour of this one! 

 

One of my favourite tiny gilled mushrooms - Resupinatus applicatus. Compare this image of the underside of these mushrooms to a photo of the topside, with my hand for scale.

This fungus is Gomphus clavatus (or Pig's Foot Gomphus - one of my favourite common names). It is a choice edible mushroom that, like the Chanterelle, has "folds" instead of gills. Despite the purplish colour, this mushroom produces ochre spores (visible on a couple of lobes in this pic).

Ever find raccoon scat sporting hair? If the "hair" tips are beaded with minute yellow spheres that then turn black (as the enclosed spores mature) you've probably found the fungal mold, Phycomyces blakesleeanus.

It's taken 30 years, but I finally found the jelly fungus, Dacryopinax spathularia! Here it is, growing on and in a fallen log.

[Mushrooms, of course, are more than the little round white shapes found in grocery stores. It's tricky to tell wild mushrooms apart. If you find some fungi growing wild, better not eat them. Just enjoy their looks and leave any eating to experts like Jan Thornhill.]

Today's Fun Fungus Walk

Our own Joan Marie Galat is a scholar of all things fungus. And she still knows how to enjoy just finding the odd mushroom here and there while out for a walk in the woods. Here are some photos she shared recently with friends. With compassion for those of us who can find it hard to figure out Latin names for various species of living things, she's captioned these photos in a more informal way.

 "Bite marks?"

"A colony."

 "A super-colony!"

 "Notice the rarely-seen upside-down bottlecap mushroom."

"The funnest of fungi!"

You can also explore the outdoors, including trees, wildlife, and the night sky, through the pages of Joan's books [https://www.joangalat.com/view-books/] . Her comments there are considerably more precise, and very interesting!

The Undead of Winter

 By Jan Thornhill

Ruby LOVES to "play dead" so we can will bury her in snow!

I love early spring! And no – I’m not talking about tulips and the return of migratory birds, though I have nothing against those things. I’m talking about earlier, in the first weeks of March, when there’s still plenty of snow on the ground, when, for all intents and purposes, it’s still the dead of winter.

Except it’s not dead.

Minute snow fleas appear on warm days in late winter.

In fact, there’s a surprising amount of life in the late winter forest here in Ontario – especially when the temperature squeaks a few degrees above the freezing mark. By early March, tree sap has begun to flow. Within a few days, deciduous crowns in the distance have taken on a haze, as if someone has smeared wet watercolour across the tips of their sharp branches. Their leaf buds are plumping. Male chickadees start using their “Hey, sweetie,” song, which, I think, is self-explanatory. Skunks wake from their winter torpor and amble about briefly – possibly just to stretch their legs – before returning to their dens to wait for real spring to come. On sun-warmed snow patches at the base of trees, snow fleas congregate, sometimes by the tens of thousands (see my post about snow fleas here).

This perennial Red-belted Polypore (Fomitopsis pinicola)
will drop spores on warm winter days.

And, all over the forest—believe it or not—fungi are procreating like crazy.

Amanita frostiana has a mycorrhizal relationship
with oaks and conifers.

These are not your basic ground mushrooms with caps and stems that you see in summer and fall. Most of those are mycorrhizal, and have a mutualistic relationship with trees, trading underground water and nutrients for the sugars that trees produce. But trees shut down sugar production in the late fall, so the underground networks of mycelia of mycorrhizal fungi also shut down during the frozen months.

The Violet-toothed polypore (Trichaptum biforme) is an annual saprobe.

But there are all kinds of other fungi that have a different kind of relationship to trees. They rot them. Many of these tree decayers, or saprobes, are polypores. Polypores develop their spores inside tiny tubes instead of on gills like store-bought mushrooms. 

The Hexagonal-pored Polypore (Neofavolus alveolaris)
 has—surprise!—hexagonal pores.

The most commonly noticed polypores are shelf fungi or conks. Many are perennial – they have skeletal hyphae—tissue than can withstand freezing and thawing—and just keep growing and growing, sometimes for 70 years or more. And during that time, whenever the temperature goes above freezing for a couple of days, these fungi produce spores. 

Yearly growth layers are obvious on this Phellinus that grows
new spore-producing tubes on its underside each year. 

But, why, you might wonder would they send out spores so much earlier than the birds start doing it and the bees start doing it—when the forest is still, in effect, asleep?

The Gilled Polypore, Lenzites betulina, has elongated tubes that almost look like gills.

They do it early because polypores, like all fungi, are opportunistic. Polypores that grow on living trees usually inhabit the heartwood that runs up the core of a tree trunk. To set up shop in this deadwood, a polypore has to get past a tree’s sapwood, the living layer below the tree’s bark. In the winter, deep freezes cause fractures in tree bark. These frost cracks are perfect for catching passing spores. When spring rains moisten the crevices, and before the tree has time to seal these cracks, the spores germinate and their mycelia work their way into the core. Once past the tree's defences, the fungus sets up shop, spreading its mycelia up and down and around. A fungus can secretly live inside a tree—gradually breaking down lignin and cellulose—for many years before it gives us humans a clue of its presence—by producing reproductive organs (shelf fungi, or conks) on the tree’s exterior.

Fomes fomentarius, is commonly called the Hoof Fungus
 (its shape)  or Tinder Fungus (used to carry fire from place to place
before matches were invented; Ötzi was carrying some).

The Cinnabar Polypore (Pycnoporus cinnabarinus) is the colour of dragon's blood!

The common name for Trametes versicolor is Turkey tails—for good reason

Chicken-of-the-Woods is an excellent edible polypore
 that has the unmistakable texture of overcooked
chicken if you miss its succulent stage.

This Artist's Conk (Ganoderma applanatum) is exhibiting geotropism
— the fungus first grew while the tree was still standing, then, after the tree 
fell, added new growth with its pore surface—once again—facing down.

Jan Thornhill Wins 2015 Vicky Metcalf Award

By Claire Eamer

Jan Thornhill

Sci/Why's own Jan Thornhill is this year's winner of the prestigious Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People - and the rest of us at Sci/Why couldn't be prouder! The award is given for a body of work over many years, and Jan certainly has that. She has fourteen books to her credit (so far) - and for many of them, she was both writer and illustrator.

Here's what the award jury had to say about Jan and her work:

With clarity and grace, Jan Thornhill’s books use both art and text to draw children into a closer and more understanding relationship with the natural world. Over a period of almost 30 years she has shown a rare ability to present serious topics to children from a scientific perspective in which gaining knowledge is pleasurable, never didactic or dry. From concept books like The Wildlife ABC, to stories and folk tales dealing with subjects like migration or wild animals in urban environments, to non-fiction books for older children on complex and challenging subjects such as conservation or death, Thornhill enriches the young reader’s awareness of the physical world and our place in it. A passionate and deeply-informed interest in nature is always conveyed with her characteristic combination of humour, empathy, and common sense.

Jan with Kirsten Hanson, chair of the board of the Metcalf Foundation and one of Vicky Metcalf's grandchildren. (Laurence Acland photo)

Jan has kindly shared with us her acceptance speech, delivered at the Writers' Trust Awards banquet on November 3. Here it is:

Thank you so much! I am humbled and thrilled to receive this award— my sincerest gratitude to the Writer’s Trust and the Metcalf Foundation.

Of course, I’ve known about the Vicky Metcalf Award for a long time, but I never thought I had a chance of getting it. Not only because there are so many amazing children’s writers in Canada, but also because I write mostly non-fiction. For a long time, non-fiction, especially for kids, has been the odd man out awards-wise. So I’m so glad that someone – well, a jury of three someones – has decided that what I write is both important and literature…. Literature, despite the fact that, in one of my books, there are fewer than 50 words in the main text. The Wildlife 123 begins with the very hard-to-write line: “One panda,” and ends with the equally difficult “One thousand tadpoles.”

So I guess I am also being recognized as an illustrator. This shows a growing understanding that picture books are, indeed, literature; and that when they work, they are a perfect marriage between words and art. This has been made even clearer to me when other artists have illustrated my words, most recently the fabulous Ashley Barron who did the gorgeous artwork for Kyle Goes Alone, published by Owlkids this fall.

I am not the only writer/illustrator who has received this award in the past 50 years, but I do seem to be the first author who writes primarily non-fiction, almost always about science, nature, and the environment. And YAY! to that, I say. As a science writer, it’s particularly gratifying to be recognized after 10 years of living under an unbelievably heavy-handed anti-science regime – a government that did not understand the importance of long-term scientific studies, research libraries, and, most critically, the free dissemination of information and ideas—which is part of what literature is also about. I hope the new government gets it right, with both the sciences and the arts.

On a more personal note, my family and friends, and a few industry associates know that more than 10 years ago I had to give up illustrating because of a painful condition in my arm that was eventually diagnosed as cancer. I’m happy to report that I’ve been cancer-free for seven years since my treatment. But I’m just as thrilled to say that, though my dexterity is not what it once was, I’ve recently figured out a way to work around my handicap and I’ve almost completed my first self-illustrated book in more than 10 years. (It comes out with Groundwood next fall.)

Along with offering my thanks again to the Writers’ Trust and the Metcalf Foundation for granting me this award, I would also like to express my gratitude for the substantial sum of money that comes with it. I don’t know if everyone here knows this, but trying to create children’s books that make a difference doesn’t often pay very well. I, and others like me, do it because we believe that children deserve excellence in the books they are given to read. Receiving this recognition confirms I actually did make the right career choice 25 years ago.

I’d also like to thank the publishers and editors I’ve worked with over the years: Sheba Meland and Anne Shone, Jennifer Canham, Karen Boersma, Karen Li, and Sheila Barry, to name just a few. I’d also like to thank my pal, Laurence, who has been my computer and science mentor for years, and my mum, who’s sitting right there, my biggest fan from the first time she stuck a crayon in my hand when I was two, and who, along with my dad, surrounded me with books.

And of course, my wonderful husband, Fred, who, for more than thirty years, has put up with the squalor that surrounds me when I work. And who has stood beside me on volcanoes and in hospitals, and has made me laugh in both places.

Finally, I want to thank the astonishing biodiversity of this planet of ours that never fails to entertain me and provide me with inspiration."

If you'd like more Jan Thornhill (who wouldn't?), check out her fungus blog, Weird and Wonderful Wild Mushrooms, or just enter her name in the Sci/Why search engine (right) to find links to her many fine Sci/Why posts.

Creepy, Eerie, Macabre Fungi for Halloween

Jan Thornhill

(This is a repost of the October 2013 one that somehow disappeared.)

Picture this: You’re in an unfamiliar part of the woods, alone. It’s spooky and dark. A storm is brewing. You hear something, stop dead in your tracks. Was it a howling wolf? Or just the wind? You’re alert now, all your senses are alive. And then you get a whiff of something—something so awful it makes your nose curl: the stench of rotting flesh, a nearby corpse. But where is it?

And then you see something…but it's not a corpse, though it's almost as grotesque. What you’ve found is a stinkhorn.

Two stinkhorns—Phallus ravenelii, with feasting slugs,
and Clathrus archeri (photos: Jan Thornhill; Wikipedia)

Stinkhorns are one of the more wondrous fruits of the fungi kingdom. They come in a bizarre variety of shapes, ranging from cage-like structures to tentacled stars that look like space aliens to rude-looking columns, some of which are dressed in lacy hoop skirts. Whatever their form, they all erupt—sometimes overnight—from an “egg,” and they all, at some point in their development, are covered in gross-smelling slime.

More traditional fungi rely on air currents to disperse their minute spores. Not the stinkhorn. A stinkhorn’s spores are imbedded in its stinky slime, disgusting muck that so closely mimics the smell of a decomposing cadaver it quickly attracts flies and other insects. When these insects take off again, they unwittingly carry away the stinkhorn’s spores stuck to their mouth parts and their tiny insect feet, spreading them far and wide. 

Stinkhorns are not the only macabre fungi you can come across in the woods. Walk farther and you might stumble upon some aptly named “Dead Man’s Fingers.” 

Dead Man's Fingers—Xylaria polymorpha (photo: Ulrike Kullik)

Properly called Xylaria polymorpha, these fungi are hardwood decomposers. They’re most often found on rotting logs, but when they grow from buried wood they can eerily resemble the blackened fingers of a corpse struggling to dig its way out from a forest grave. Unlike stinkhorns, which can pop up and then deteriorate in a couple of days, Dead Man’s Fingers are so horny and tough they can persist for months, or even years. 

And then there’s the Bleeding Tooth fungus.  

The spores of the Bleeding Tooth Fungus, Hydnellum peckii, are produced
on tooth-like projections beneath the cap. (photo: Darvin DeShazer)

The first time I stumbled upon one of these, it was so covered in “blood” I thought I’d found something recently killed. Though Hydnellum peckii, when fresh and moist, exudes something that looks shockingly like what oozes out of a slaughtered animal’s veins, the globules of pigment-filled liquid are nothing like animal blood. There is, however, a compound in these fungi that can affect blood. This compound, called atromentin, has anticoagulant properties similar to those of heparin, a medication used to prevent blood clots. Ominously, though, an overdose of these anticoagulants can cause a patient to bleed to death.

Some Omphalotus species, or Jack-O'-Lantern mushrooms,
glow in the dark. (photos: Thomas Schoch; Noah Siegel)

The fungi world provides even more Halloween-appropriate characters. In daylight, some of these look like perfectly normal mushrooms. But if you happen to be out for a midnight woodland stroll without a flashlight, you might be frightened by an eerie glow emanating from the base of tree—a glow produced by bioluminescent fungi. Scientists don't yet know why more than 70 species glow in the dark, but one idea is that their light might attract nocturnal insects that could help spread the mushrooms' spores. 

But the prize for the most frightening, the most macabre, the most fiendishly devious fungi has to go to the Zombie Ant Ophiocordyceps. 

The fruiting body of a Zombie Ant Ophiocordyceps protruding
from the head of a dead ant. The white nodules are another
parasitic fungus—a parasite of a parasite! (photo: David Hughes)

The Cordyceps family of fungi are parasites, and their chosen victims are often insects. But what makes Ophiocordyceps so unforgettable, and so nasty, is that after it has worked its way inside an ant's body, it travels to its brain, where chemicals are released that control the ant's actions. The now "zombified" ant is compelled to walk a distance from its colony, and eventually latches tightly onto a leaf with its mandibles. It will never let go. The fungus continues to grow, killing the ant and producing a fruiting structure that sprouts straight up out of the insect's head. The fungus then produces spores that are dispersed by air currents, so the fiendish cycle of Zombie Ants can continue. But, wait! There's some comeuppance for the dastardly Omphiocordyceps: a completely different parasitic fungi preys on it, reducing its ability to produce mature spores!    

For more information about fungi in general: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/

For more information about Zombie Ant Fungi: http://ento.psu.edu/directory/dhughes