Breakfast of Champignons

Lots of celebrities who were born with boring names & chose to legally zhuzh it up a bit; Robert Zimmerman? It’s Bob Dylan to you, baby. Reginald Dwight? Huh-uh honey, it’s Elton John now.  Christopher Breaux? Honestly that name was fine but Frank Ocean drips💦.

But what if you had a crap family name, just like, a really s**tty name, & then you found out that you might not even be *related* to the folks that s**tty name came from, & when you tried to legally change it it only got WORSE?

Well, then you’d know how the adorable, fuzzy, done-literally-dirty-by-science Coprinopsis lagopus feels (if mushrooms have feelings- debate amongst yourselves🤷🏼‍♀️). Happy y'all!

The Coprinus genus that formerly contained the hare’s foot (pictured before & after) & other coprinoid species like shaggy manes & inky caps etc. were all thought to be from the same *dramatic* family because of their awkward tendency to turn themselves inside out & liquify as an act of fungal foreplay. But, in 2001, Science People determined via DNA that, true to the genus name, this theory was, if you'll excuse the expression and my excessive use of punctuation: full of crap!

Actually, get out the swear jar cause like Shaq & Kobe, we’re gonna keep talkin' s**t. Coprinus, from Ancient Greek κόπρινος (kóprinos), literally means “full of excrement”. Turns out autodigesting, like a blue verification badge just anyone can pay for, is not that exclusive. The species that were segregated out via sequencing were reclassified into family Psathyrellaceae, under the genera Parasola (“fancy umbrella-like”), Coprinellus (Latin for “little s**t”), & finally Coprinopsis (Latin for “looks like s**t”). Most etymological mentions state the root word was chosen ‘because these fungi grow on dung’ but I personally find them on all kinds of substrate, & think maybe Finnish mycologist Petter Adolf Karsten was just a Mean Dad™ who flipped the script & brought his home to work with him🤬.

Here is where I normally list modern cognates with the root word, copro-, but… nope. Hard pass. I don’t want that filth in my search history, or my brain before bed.🙈 Goodnight!

It took more time than usual to sus out the etymology of this week’s subject- Cerioporus-because of some kind of taxonomy drama that I do not understand, but which we have all been unwittingly taking part in for like, oh, 137 YEARS.

The year is 1886. Coca-cola is invented. President Grover Cleveland (49) marries his girlfriend (21) in the White House & probably gets high-fived by Adlai Stevenson before going on to dedicate the Statue of Liberty🗽(Fun fact: the Baby Ruth candy bar was named after one of presidents kids, not the baseball star). But I neurodiverge💫.

It was also in 1886 that French naturalist Lucien Quélet moved Polyporus squamosus, commonly known as dryad’s saddle or pheasant back polypore & pictured in today’s post, to the genus Cerioporus. Which is funny, since all my references, & indeed much of the internet, still calls it Polyporus, a name originated by Fries in 1821. Is it the world's longest burn? Was Quélet Quécancelled? No clue. But I DID come up with a plausible etymology, so let’s get into it!

First off, know that Latin ‘borrowed’ a ton of Greek words in a genius move today copied only by such marketing icons as Krazy Glue™ , Kum-N-Go™(🙃yes they're real) , and Kool-Aid™ . That’s right, by changing c’s to k’s and calling it a day. That was it. That was their whole move. They even still said the ‘kuh’ sound, & that’s what I’m on about- when you read Cerioporus, feel free to hear ‘Kerioporus’, or the Romans win & they’re *such* jerks about winning.

The ‘cerio-’ comes from Latin ceres, “wax”, from Ancient Greek κηρός (kērós), meaning “beeswax”. Perhaps if you speak Asturian, catalan, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or Occitan, you already knew this, because their words for ‘wax’ are all cognates. Speaking of kognates…er, cognates, kerosene (a combustible liquid made with waxy paraffin oil) is a modern word derived from the same root.

The suffix -porus you know well by now means ‘pores’, so Cerioporus is an aptly named genus meaning ‘waxy pored’, as the species all have creamy white hymeniums, just like a kandle™ . I mean candle.

And if you know what the beef was between Fries & Quelet, drop it in the comments!

WEEEEEEEEEE 🤏🙂

CINNABAR/INUS= RED ORANGE

One well known mushroom with the color word "cinnabar" in the binomial is Cantharellus cinnabarinus, the Cinnabar-red Chanterelle.

Cinnabar is a color best described as red mixed with orange. It is also the name of a deep red mineral, which, when powdered, creates the mineral pigment vermillion.

Vermillion is a color word that can also be used to describe this particular red/orange, and got its name because of its visual similarity to another red pigment which preceeded it.

This preceeding red pigment was made from Kermes vermilio, a type of scale insect that feeds on the sap of evergreen oaks and whose female produces a red dye called "kermes". The word vermillion comes from the specific epithet *vermilio*, from Latin vermis, meaning worm, because apparently French entomologist Gustave Planchon was not a stickler anday have been a 'Eh, potato/potahto' kinda guy.

But PLOT TWIST, the color made from kermes was not called vermillion, but *crimson*, which comes from Persian "qirmiz". Crimson is best described as red with a tinge of blue or purple in it.

Cinnabar comes from Ancient Greek κιννάβαρι (kinnábari), possibly from Arabic "zinjafr" (transliteration of Arabic). Interestingly, the "cinna" part of the word is related to modern English "henna", a red dye made from a tree of the same name. This is probably from Persian *hannāy-, "to smear, anoint".

Who would have known that a word could be connected to history that relates to culture, religion, art, entomology, and fashion!

FLAVEO: I AM GOLDEN/YELLOW

Amanita flavaconia is named thusly because of its golden yellow color. When you see flavi/flavo/flava in a scientific name, you can be are it refers to some yellow/golden aspect of the organism in question.

It comes from PIE (Proto-Indo-European) root word *bʰel-, meaning "to shine, flash, burn," also "shining white", (potentially the way the yellow sun or gold would shine and appear white) and is also where we get the color name "blue" and the Greek word for white, "phalos".

XANTHO= YELLOW💛

Ever wondered where the 'xantho' in Agaricus xanthodermus comes from?

Xantho comes from Ancient Greek ξανθός (xanthos), meaning yellow, from Proto-Indo-European (that's the hypothetical mother of all Indo-European languages) root *ksendh-, meaning "white, blond, grey". I guess the Proto people's were not super picky when they went to the hairdresser🤷🏼‍♀️✂️🤷🏼‍♀️

A. xanthodermus (and some other Agaricus sp. as well) have a special trick- its skin stains brilliant yellow when bruised or KOH is applied. It fades after some time but it's a fun party trick!

is back, with an etymological twist.

This year, as I hold my own mental health together with packing tape, dog hair, and a sports bra like the love child of MacGyver and Ester Perel, I will pair photos and colors with explanations of the words science uses to express color.

I invite you to join me once again, as we come through one of the statistically hardest parts of what has already been a very, very (veryyyyy) hard year.
❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍

Due to the ice storms and power outages I couldn't post this yesterday, but here's an imperfect Sarcoscypha heart for all of you. Sending my imperfect love out to you, always❣

A banana slug tending to its Cyathus striatus fields for 🥰

Sometimes etymology is straightforward, as in the case of Ganoderma, (Gano- meaning shining & -derma meaning skin), wherein any one could easily determine by touch or sight why such a shiny skinned fungus would be named thusly.

Other times though, it’s a bit more like learning that Hugh Jackman was called Sticks by his childhood friends- there’s gotta be a story there*. So it goes with Laccaria, style.

The fungus Laccaria laccata was originally classified, as were all gilled mushrooms at one time, in the Agaricus genus as A.laccatus, eventually becaming the type species (which is the given standard for that genus or subgenus) for the free-standing genus Laccaria. 

In the intro I mentioned the genus Ganoderma, the type species for which is also known as the “lacquer shelf”. The same root puts the “lac” in “Laccata”, & while the word made a pit stop in New Latin as lacca, it is originally of Sanskrit origin. लाक्षा (lākṣā), represents the number 100k, & is said to refer to the thousands of insects farmed to harvest usable resin quantities, known as lac.

Lac is the reddish, resinous secretion of insects used originally in India to create a shiny shel*lac* or *lac*quer on objects. (Sidenote: there may be a connection between the modern word “lox”, from Yiddish לאַקס‎ (laks, “salmon”), & lacquer, from speculation that the resin’s red color reminded the first harvesters of bright salmon flesh.) The color component also explains the food colorings on artificially colored food items like Kool-Aid, such as Yellow 6 lake & Blue 40 lake (lakes which were originally a red dye). 

Lacquered objects are known for what? For being shiny, of course! But Laccaria are anything BUT shiny- they in fact are known for never being slimy (even when wet) & for having finely scaly, hairy, or just plain matte caps. When Austrian Giovanni Antonio Scopoli chose the specific epithet laccata in 1772, he must have had access to a microscope (the 1st was invented in the 16th c.) & perhaps have been a crow in a former life- he noted that the spores of his specimen were shiny, perhaps like the lacquered arms of the chair he sat in, & dubbed it “laccata”.

How you 'lacca' that?!😜