Huxiang Natural Calendar丨 A blue-green mushroom with artistic talent

Huxiang Natural Calendar丨 A blue-green mushroom with artistic talent

Thursday, January 13, 2022 Day 9

The world's art halls have been passed down for thousands of years, and European fine wood inlays must have a place. During the Renaissance, European craftsmen spliced and inlaid wood chips of different colors with wood, shells, metals, dentists, etc., and presented various animal and plant patterns in natural tones. The more complex the image, the more the raw material color is required. Among them, the blue-green tone is extremely rare.

Craftsmen have found that some tree sections naturally turn into a beautiful blue-green, but discoloration is not common. As a result, fine wood inlays with blue-green hues became a luxury as precious as gold, a symbol of wealth, status and honor, and a treasure that people competed to collect.

Today, it has long been clear that wood does not naturally turn blue-green, but is contaminated with some kind of fungus that can stain them green. This fungus belongs to the family Green Cup Fungus, and the Green Cup Fungus seen in Hunan is one of them.

In the mountains of the Western Hunan region, poplars, oak trees, eucalyptus trees and coniferous trees and other decaying trees will grow dark blue-green "small mushrooms", "mushroom heads" such as pocket version of azure glazed Ru kiln porcelain plates, beautiful, this is the green cup plate fungus. They are wood rot fungi that erode the cell walls of plant xylem duct cells and release discocarp lignin in the process, staining the surface of the wood blue-green.

Miraculously, this erosion does not cause large-scale decay of wood, but can inhibit the destruction of wood by other fungi and even termites, so the wood dyed green by the "green cup fungus" has the innate advantage of making works of art, coupled with this beautiful and mysterious color, it is no wonder that it has been among the art halls since the Renaissance.

【Small business card】

The ascomycete disc is 3 to 10 mm in diameter, disc-shaped, with a dark blue-green surface, slightly inward or wavy edges, and a smooth surface. It has a stalk, 1 to 5 mm long, and is partially grown to nearly mesophytic. Ascospores have 8 ascospores, which are oval and smooth. It is often born on rotten wood in summer and autumn.

The fungal fruiting bodies and cultured hyphae produce a blue-green pigment that is used as a natural dye in decorative wood products, textiles, etc.

Text/Peng Yahui Photo/Chen Zuohong Design/Chen Qingqing Think Tank/Chen Zuohong Special Support/Hunan Forestry Bureau