Ink Mushrooms

[musicman123]

Here is a little clearer shot: You can also see now all sorts of little dots on the ink surface; not sure if those are new or not.

 

 

Because the color is just so much the same and they are so smooth and shiny, there is a part of me that wonders if those are mushrooms at all and not just droplets of "ink" that somehow were pulled onto the surface of the growth. Alas, I forgot to poke one before retireieving the mass.

 

 

 

Maybe they were below the surface?

 

 

_

 

PM sent requesting where to send it to.

That is extremely cool! When you send it, can you add a little water water to the vial, so the thing won't dry out and shrivel?

[vossad01]

When you send it, can you add a little water to the vial, so the thing won't dry out and shrivel?

 

Tap water added.

[musicman123]

 

Tap water added.

AWESOME!

[amberleadavis]

disgusting and cool

[vossad01]

Zee package is on its way

[Fabienne]

This is very interesting indeed.

[musicman123]

Well, once the package gets here, I'm gonna be doing some micrographs of it. I hope the ink already prestained the cells for me.

[Ergative]

I'm so excited for an update!

[Katharine]

Any results???

[amberleadavis]

Yeah, MusicMan, are you too busy with finals and school to do important stuff like put ink mushrooms under a microscope?

[TheRealScubaSteve]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0YIJQ1jgEI

[musicman123]

Oh well shoot! I had the pictures and all, but just totes forgot to post 'em!!!! They will probably be on later tonight! I promise!!!!

 

Any results???

Yeah, MusicMan, are you too busy with finals and school to do important stuff like put ink mushrooms under a microscope?

[musicman123]

Well here are the results. I got the mushrooms attached to a toothpick in a vial with some water in it. I destained the toothpick and fungus to a certain degree, with a rinse of distilled water. The fungus appeared to be highly clumped together under initial examination, and was definitely too thick to do a wet-mount slide, or a dry mount either. I didn't really have a microtome handy (or one at all) so I couldn't exactly cut it thinner.

 

Unmagnified visual examination showed a large solid blob on the end of the toothpick, with some fibrous material running the length of the toothpick. The blob appeared quite dry, so the fungus most likely dried up during transit, and is unable to be revived at this point. It underwent a long soaking in distilled water, but there was not major change. The blob was quite hard and solid, and a poke with a scalpel did not cause it to rupture. Thus, I concluded that the blob was made of a solid mass, and not filled with liquid as I initially thought. The picture posted showed large black bubbles atop the mass; yet, when examined, none where found. My guess is that those were the fruiting bodies filled with spores, which have ruptured in transit. Proper precaution was taken to avoid inhalation.

 

I went ahead after drying the specimen and examined it under 40x magnification first. The specimen had to be mounted onto a paper towel, as a glass slide would not work due to it's thickness. The light was as bright as possible from this particular microscope.

 

The following is a picture of the tip of the toothpick under 40x. On the tip, you can see a silhouette of a good amount of mycelia (roots of a fungus) as well as noticeable clumps along the shaft of the toothpick.

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Tip.jpg

 

Next, is a cross-section of the toothpick. This doesn't really show any fungus, but it looks cool. You can see a bit of the mycelia along the left, but they are not very apparent.

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Cross%20Section.jpg

 

Up next, I took a scalpel and scraped off a bit of material from the side of the toothpick, near the large blob. A look under the scope showed that the material was indeed fungal mycelia, which have grown, as I imagine, from the main blob. These are all taken at 40x magnification, as I was unable to go any higher, without sacrificing picture quality.

 

For those of you viewing who are unfamiliar with fungal anatomy, think of mycelia as the root system of the main fungus. You know how trees have a very large root system? Well, the roots of a fungus are even more tangled up, and much much larger. The entire root system ends up forming a very large sheet of tangled mycelia. I've added a picture of the fungi anatomy to clarify.

 

http://science.kennesaw.edu/~jdirnber/Bio2108/Lecture/LecBiodiversity/31-01-FungalMycelia-CL.jpg

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Rhizome.jpg

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Rhizome%202.jpg

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Rhizome%203.jpg

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Rhizome.jpg

 

After getting these pictures, I took a stab at slicing the hard blob into an examinable piece. As I expected, the main blob consisted of hyphae and mycelia, which is typical of any other fungus. The arrow in the first picture is pointing directly at a large clump of the hyphae of the fungus. The lighter red portions appear to be the "flesh" of the fungus, while the very dark portions consist of highly clumped together mycelia and hyphae. In the second picture, to the left of the arrow is the same clump at 100x, showing the density of the hyphae in the first picture. The lighter portions are definitely devoid of any hyphae, so it most likely must be the "flesh."

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Clump.jpg

 

http://files.goviralforyou.com/Inks/Misc/Ink%20Mushrooms/Clump%202.jpg

 

I would like to note that I am not a trained mycologist, so most of this info is just from my prior experience and learnings. I wish I could have gotten much better pictures, but I was lacking some equipment at the time I was looking at the sample. I tried to focus these images as best as I could, but taking pictures of them was quite a challenge.

 

CONCLUSION- What was growing was definitely some type of strong, common fungus. It did not produce large fruiting bodies, so we can rule out any of the large fungi classes, such as club fungi, gill fungi, pore fungi, and puffballs. As well, since the fungi was found in an aqueous environment so we can obviously eliminate fungi of the class, Zygomycota, which includes Black break mold. Most likely, we are left with Ascomycota, that includes includes yeasts, the powdery mildews, the black and blue-green molds, edible types such as the morel and the truffle, and species that cause such diseases of plants as Dutch elm disease, chestnut blight, apple scab, and ergot. These still spread via spores, so it is best to avoid cross-contimination which would be a large problem for an ink collection.

Edited June 1, 2015 by musicman123

[amberleadavis]

Good job.

[vossad01]

Cool, thanks for doing this!

 

Note to future readers intent on mailing ink fungi: fully fill the vial with water (it could happen, right?). I filled it enough to at least completely cover the fungal mass when standing upright, but that clearly was not enough. I wonder if the wood from the toothpick absorbed a lot exacerbating the the issue or if the same level of drying would have occurred anyway.

 

In other news, I dumped the ink this past Saturday. There had been no new growth, and it seemed like normal ink as it was running down the sides of the sink (no visible strands or clumps or anything).

[musicman123]

Cool, thanks for doing this!

 

Note to future readers intent on mailing ink fungi: fully fill the vial with water (it could happen, right?). I filled it enough to at least completely cover the fungal mass when standing upright, but that clearly was not enough. I wonder if the wood from the toothpick absorbed a lot exacerbating the the issue or if the same level of drying would have occurred anyway.

 

In other news, I dumped the ink this past Saturday. There had been no new growth, and it seemed like normal ink as it was running down the sides of the sink (no visible strands or clumps or anything).

A mass of fungus like this with visible mycelia will tend to stay in a nice clump, especially in a liquid solution. This is due to the fact that the roots (mycelia and hyphae) get highly tangled as shown and can't really drift away. The main problems would be the microscopic spores (which my scope definitely can't show) that get into your pens and start a brand new colony.

 

P.s.- I'm pretty sure the toothpick wicked away a lot of the water, but there was still some in the vial.

[wallylynn]

cool photos.

[Katharine]

Well here are the results.

 

Fascinating! Thank you!

[amberleadavis]

Adam, I miss you!

 

I have bottle of ink with mold - well it was a contaminated bottle and then it wasn't air tight and it was sitting next to plants.... so now it has colonies. Does anyone want to play?

[Cyber6]

I think I'll skip lunch today...