Word: funguses
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...battle against Dutch elm disease continues, but the front grows broader every year. A fungus borne by tiny bark beetles that kills the stately Ulmus americana by causing its circulatory system to clog up, the disease first arrived in the U.S. from Europe in the early 1930s. In the past few years, it has crossed the Rocky Mountains and reached California and the eastern portions of Oregon, where it threatens to spread as rapidly as it has in the rest of the nation. At present, the fungus is killing trees at a rate of 400,000 or more every year...
...story is very frightening," said TIME Correspondent James Willwerth. What was worrying Willwerth last week was a question for which millions of Americans, from epidemiologists to the victims' families sought an answer: What microbe, fungus, toxin or other killer took the lives of more than a score of people who had been present at the 1976 annual convention of the Pennsylvania American Legion in Philadelphia? "Death here," reported Willwerth by telephone from Harrisburg, where he talked with investigating doctors, "is just as sudden and unexplained as in a crime or science-fiction story. Even for the literal minded...
...indication of either plague or typhoid fever. So the search went on into more exotic terrain. Tests also ruled out tularemia (rabbit fever), a deadly tropical disease known as Lassa fever, and Marburg disease, a viral disease from Africa. Further screening seemed to dismiss fungi as a suspect; no fungus is known to produce the fatally fulminating pneumonia typical of Legion disease...
Such effervescent reportage, unavailable since the demise of Louella Parsons, deadens the volume's central message. Healthy new comestibles are described in terms that instantly subvert the appetite: "The Pfizer Company has produced a product called Sure-Curd that is made from the parasitic fungus Endothia parasitica, a crystalline enzyme that . . . cuts in half the maturation time for Cheddar cheese." Moreover, the book's glossary of labels for meatless-dieters is as discouraging as mock chopped liver: "ovo-lactarians" supplement their plant food with eggs and milk; "granivores" eat only seeds and grains; "fruitarians" consume only fruits; "vegans...
...BOTANIST "pilobolus" is a kind of fungus that ejects its spores. It might seem a poor choice for the name of a dance troupe, but in an odd way "pilobolus" does suggest their style. Departing from classical ballet form, where the body moves with a fluid grace. Pilobolus has choreographed dances that stress the interaction of human bodies. By contorting their backs and intertwining their limbs these six dancers' can arrange themselves in a staggering number and variety of patterns. The dancers bodies often mingle in such complex and intriguing ways that their limbs and extremities seem extensions...