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Though it’s not spooky month, there are plenty of nasty, ooey, spooky things for me to cover. Some of those things thrive in the dark of forests. The damp moss that covers the forest floor is a ripe canvas for the colonization of organisms that are neither plant nor animal. One of those organisms looks like a chunk of tooth that oozes bloody globules of vermillion juice. Let’s learn about the Bleeding Tooth Fungus.
The fungus is an interesting organism. It is neither animal nor plant but is far more closely related to us than to anything else on the planet. They are the mushrooms we slice for dinner, the shrooms we take to see gods, the poisons used for murder, the mold that decays our food, and even the source of some of the diseases which plague us.
Though some of those deadly forms of fungus have their own interesting attributes, the sessile forms that splooge their reproductive organs out of the soil to spread their seed are some of the most instantly recognizable and interesting because we can stumble upon them any time we go for a stroll. Luckily, it is kind of the only way we get to see most fungi.
There is a huge list of bizarre fungi, and one of the top contenders for weirdest has to be the bleeding Tooth Fungus. In short, it’s everything it says on the tin. A blocky mishappen white fruiting body that oozes blobs of red juicy liquids.
It is much more than this and especially when it ages, but before we explore the ins and outs of this shroomy critter, let’s take a brief look at how we came to know about it. Due to its quite large geographic distribution, from North America, to Europe, Iran, and Korea, it has been known to humans for quite some time, but it was first recognized by western science in 1913 by American mycologist Howard James Banker – who, if you’re interested, was a researcher at Columbia University through the 1930s and contributed a bunch of stuff to the journal called Mycologia of the Mycological Society of America. Banker described the Bleeding Tooth Fungus as belonging to the Hydnellum genus, a designation which has remained stable to this day.
He also gave it the species name of peckii, in honor of mycologist Charles Horton Peck who was the New York State Botanist from 1867 to 1915 and was responsible for describing over 2700 species of north American fungi. The honor was also given because the type specimens that Banker used to describe the new species were collected by Peck.
The genus and species name by Banker remained the most valid over the next hundred years, but plenty of scientists would offer alternative perspectives on where this little fungus might place on a genus or species level. For example, Italian botanist and mycologist Pier Andrea Saccardo figured the species should belong to the genus Hydnum in 1925. Then Brown University Mycologist and hitter/catcher in Major League Baseball with the Boston Red Sox Wally Snell AND Esther Amelia Dick decided to place the species in the Calodon genus in 1956. Despite all that research, it ended up back where it started.
The Bleeding Tooth Fungus is classified based on the following shared characteristics: flesh that is marked with concentric lines that form alternating pale and darker zones (which makes it zonate); an extremely peppery taste; a sweetish odor; spores that are ellipsoid, and not amyloid (that is, not absorbing iodine when stained with Melzer’s reagent), acyanophilous (not staining with the reagent Cotton Blue) and covered with tubercules; the presence of clamp connections in the hyphae. Due to its regionality and weird looks, it has collected a list of names including – strawberries and cream, the bleeding Hydnellum, the bleeding tooth fungus, the red-juice tooth, and the Devil’s tooth. We now need to take a closer look at the actual fungus.
As in all mushroom-producing fungi, the fruit bodies or sporocarps are the reproductive structures that are produced from fungal mycelium when the appropriate environmental conditions of temperature, humidity and nutrient availability are met. That’s right. The stuff we call mushrooms and eat atop pizza are actually the organism’s sex organs, kinda like how fruit is the sex organ of plenty of plants. The true organism is usually a network of root-like things underground called mycelium.
The Bleeding Tooth Fungus is a stipitate hydnoid fungus, meaning that it has a cap atop a stipe (or stem), and a form resembling a Hydnum—characterized by a teeth-like hymenium, rather than gills or pores on the underside of the cap. Fruit bodies growing closely together often appear to fuse together (this is called “confluence”). They can reach a height of up to 10.5 cm (4 1⁄8 in). Fresh fruit bodies exude a striking, thick red fluid when they are moist, present even in young specimens, which are lumplike in appearance.
Ok. But what is that juice and why does it ooze it? This gon be fun.
All life requires energy. Most big multicellular creatures digest their food into simple sugars, which are then used to provide the energy needed for survival. This is the catabolic component of the metabolic process. If it follows an oxidative route, its other end products include carbon dioxide and water. We expel not just carbon dioxide, but also a significant amount of gaseous water into the atmosphere. This is why we can see our breath on chilly days: the heated water vapor condenses when it comes into contact with the colder outside air, forming a cloud of microscopic water droplets.
When these droplets touch colder surfaces on really cold days, they freeze into solid ice, which accounts for frost on clothes and hair at subzero temperatures. If we boost our metabolic rate through physical exercise, the amount of frost rises.
Many fungi produce carbon dioxide and water as metabolic waste products, which some invisibly emit from their surface. Their metabolism accelerates during periods of fast growth. During these times, certain mushrooms produce visible drips on their surface. This is called Guttation. Guttation is a botany and mycology term used to describe the process by which plants expel excess water via drips from their leaves.
For certain mushrooms, this is a reliable identifying trait, yet for others, it is completely unknown. Guttation is prevalent in certain corticioid and bracket fungi, as well as several stipitate hydnoids, but uncommon in gilled fungi and boletes, with the exception of a few Suilli. The guttation drops of the Bleeding Tooth Fungus are typically dyed crimson with terphenylquinone (or a byproduct), a pigment generated by this a mushroom genus. Under favorable temperature and humidity, red droplets can also be seen in other members of the genus during active growth.
The cap’s surface is convex to flattened, like my ex, more or less uneven and sometimes slightly depressed in the center, like myself. It is usually densely covered with “hairs” that give it a texture similar to felt or velvet; these hairs are sloughed off in age, leaving the caps of mature specimens smooth as chris evan’s melons. Its shape varies from somewhat round to irregular, 4 to 10 cm (1 5⁄8 to 3 7⁄8 in), or even as much as 20 cm (7 7⁄8 in) wide as a result of confluence.
The cap is initially whitish, but later turns slightly brownish, with irregular dark-brown to nearly black blotches where it is bruised. Mushroom bruises are the worst. People bruises? That’s another story. In maturity, the surface of the Bleeding Tooth Fungus is fibrous and tough, scaly, and jagged, grayish brown in the upper part of the cap, and somewhat woody. The flesh is a pale pinkish brown.
The spines are thin, cylindrical, and tapering or terete, measuring less than 5 mm (1/4 in) in length and becoming shorter as they approach the cap edge. They are crammed together, with three to five teeth per square millimeter on average. Reminds me of my crowded jaws. Initially pinkish white, they mature to a grayish brown. The stem is thick, short, and frequently malformed. It gets bulbous when it enters the ground and can root for many centimeters. Although it may grow to be up to 5 cm (2 in) long and 1 to 3 cm (38 to 1+18 in) broad, only approximately 0.1 to 1 cm (116 to 38) above ground. The upper section is coated with the same teeth as the underside of the cap, whilst the lower part is hairy and frequently encases forest floor detritus. The odor of the fruit body has been characterized as “mild to unpleasant,” or akin to hickory nuts, as Banker stated in his initial description.
The powdery deposit formed by allowing spores of a fungus fruit body to fall onto a surface underneath is known as a spore print. Most mushroom identification handbooks include it as a significant diagnostic trait. When examined in bulk, it reveals the color of the mushroom spores. This is often referred to as the deposit, in deposit, or some other such combination of terms.
The spores of the Bleeding Tooth Fungus appear brown in deposit. A light microscope shows finer structural details: they are broadly spherical but end abruptly in a tiny point, their surfaces are covered with minute, wart-like nodules, and their size ranges from 5.0-5.3 by 4.0-4.7 micrometers. When stained with Melzer’s reagent, a chemical reagent used by mycologists to assist with the identification of fungi, the spores are inamyloid, which means they do not absorb iodine.
The cells of the Bleeding Tooth Fungus and its hyphae also present various characters useful for its characterization. The hyphae that form the cap are hyaline or translucent, smooth, thin-walled, and 3–4 µm thick. They collapse when dry but may be readily revived with a weak 2% solution of potassium hydroxide. Those in the cap form an intricate tangle with a tendency to run longitudinally. They are divided into cellular compartments known as septa and have clamp connections—short branches connecting one cell to the previous cell to allow passage of the products of nuclear division. The basidia, the spore-bearing cells in the hymenium, are club-shaped, four-spored, and measure 35–40 by 4.7–6 µm.
This nasty looking beasty is a mycorrhizal fungus meaning that it develops a mutualistic connection with the roots of particular trees (known as “hosts”), exchanging minerals and amino acids from the soil for fixed carbon from the host. Subterranean hyphae of the fungus form a tissue sheath around the rootlets of a wide range of tree species, forming an intimate association that is especially beneficial to the host (known as ectomycorrhizal), as the fungus produces enzymes that mineralize organic compounds and facilitate nutrient transfer to the tree.
The Bleeding Tooth Fungus belongs to the Bankeraceae family, named after the Banker guy. This group is in the order Thelephorales which is corticoid and hydnoid fungi. The members of the Bankeraceae are terrestrial and ectomycorrhizal. Which simply refers to fungi that have a symbiotic relationship with the roots of various plant species. The ectomycorrhizal structures of the Bleeding Tooth Fungus are among a few in the Bankeraceae that have been studied in detail. They are characterized by a plectenchymatous mantle—a layer of tissue made of hyphae tightly arranged in a parallel orientation, or palisade, and which rarely branch or overlap each other. These hyphae, along with adhering mineral soil particles, are embedded in a gelatinous matrix.
The hyphae of the ectomycorrhizae can become chlamydospores, an adaptation that helps the fungus tolerate unfavorable conditions. Chlamydospores of the Bleeding Tooth Fungus have a peculiar structure—markedly distinct from those of other Bankeraceae—with thick, smooth inner walls and an outer wall that is split radially into warts. The most striking characteristic of the ectomycorrhizae as a whole is the way the black outer layers of older sections are shed, giving a “carbonized appearance”. The majority of the underground biomass of the fungus is concentrated near the surface, most likely as “mycelial mats”—dense clusters of ectomycorrhizae and mycelium. The mycelium is also known to extend far beyond the site of the fruit bodies, as far as 337 centimeters (11+1⁄12 ft) away.
Molecular techniques have been developed to aid in the conservation of stipitate hydnoid fungus such as the Bleeding Tooth. While counting fruit bodies has historically been used to estimate fungal distribution, this approach has a fundamental flaw in that fruit bodies are not produced consistently every year, and the lack of fruit bodies does not indicate the absence of mycelium in the soil. Modern approaches that use the polymerase chain reaction to determine the presence of fungal DNA in soil have helped to minimize the problems associated with monitoring the presence and dispersion of fungus mycelia.
Bleeding Tooth Fungus fruit bodies can be found growing alone, dispersed, or crowded together on the ground among conifers, commonly among mosses and pine needle litter. This nasty beast is a “late-stage” fungus that often begins associating with more mature hosts once the canopy has closed in boreal forests dominated by jack pine. It has been observed that it prefers hilly or subalpine habitats. The fungus is found across North America but is most prevalent in the Pacific Northwest; its range extends north to Alaska and east to North Carolina. It grows with Douglas-fir, fir, and hemlock in the Puget Sound region in Washington state. It has been gathered under lodgepole pine along the Oregon Coast.
In addition to North America, the mushroom is common in Europe, with reports of its occurrence in Italy, Germany, and Scotland. The species is widespread in the latter location, but it is becoming scarcer in numerous European nations, including Norway, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Increased pollution has been proposed as one probable cause of the mushroom’s decrease in central Europe. The first reports outside of Europe and North America were from Iran in 2008 and Korea in 2010.
Ok…so what about their taste? There’s no accounting for it. They look like a delicious nutritious treat. They look like something that would go good with a biscuit. I mean…knowing a tiny bit about mycology makes me see this thing as a toxic monstrous beast to stay the hell away from, but we have learned it is not. So, how does it taste? The Bleeding Tooth Fungus fruit bodies have been characterized as resembling “Danish pastries coated with strawberry jam.” Although Hydnellum species are not dangerous, they are not very palatable due to their awful taste.
This bitter flavor lingers even in dried specimens. The mushroom is valued by natural dyers, who dry it and use it alone to create a beige dye or combine it with mordants (substances, such as allum or iron, that cause a dye to set into fabric and other surfaces) to create blue-green hues. Scientists have found that extracts from the Bleeding Tooth Fungus contain the chemical compound atromentin, which like heparin, can be used as an anti-coagulant to keep blood clots from forming and which also has anti-bacterial properties and may be an option for treating the most common strain of bacterial pneumonia. Researchers are also looking at another chemical found in the Bleeding Tooth Fungus, thelephoric acid, which may someday be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
That’s the Bleeding Tooth Fungus. Learn anything new? The other species in the Hydnellum genus are interesting too, maybe I will cover them as well. See ya next time.
The post What is the Bloody Tooth Fungus? first appeared on The Average Scientist.
