Word: funguses
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...Fungus meant mushroom to the Romans. To scientists today, the term connotes a vast vegetable family whose members include some of man's best friends and some of his deadlier enemies. Only in recent decades has science even begun to tell which is which, or even to count their kind; so far, more than 100,000 species have been identified, and there are probably at least 150,000 more awaiting discovery...
...savory truffle is a fungus, and so is the unsavory trifle that causes athlete's foot. Life-saving penicillin comes from one fungus (Penicillium notatum); from another comes the lichen that is slowly devouring the Parthenon. Yet another yields the drug LSD, which has been used experimentally in the treatment of schizophrenic children and alcoholics. Knowledge of the complex, infinitely various, unbelievably hardy fungus kingdom has multiplied immeasurably in the past century. In this fascinating, ambitious book by Lucy Kavaler, its villains, heroes and hopefuls are fully explained to the nonscientific reader...
Social Parasite. Uruguayan scientists working for the department stumbled on the secret while they were searching for a fungus or a bacteria that might be fatal to fire ants. They discovered that in Uruguay, where the ants are native they are no serious problem. Often they are so weak that they build flimsy nests which wash away in the rain. This suggested not an ant killer but a social parasite...
Detailing the promiscuous lives of Lizzie's assistants in the barbershop, Dahlberg emphasizes the sordidness of sex. Yet he can juxtapose such passages with lyrics full of awe about passion. In Truth Is More Sacred, he affirms that "emptied of awe ... the heart is a moldy fungus that poisons the whole earth...
...world. Another portrait is Shorty, which sets a stubble-faced recluse incongruously in a sleek green silk wingback chair. (Soon after the portrait was finished, Shorty burned to death in his shack.) An eerie vision of a Mushroom Picker in the subterranean farms of Pennsylvania casts the tiny fungus caps in an almost surreal drama of light and shadow...