Medicinal Mushrooms

Looking like a charred, disembodied hand from an old B-movie, it's Xylaria polymorpha (Pers.) Grev.
Picture credit: Chris Evans, River to River CWMA, Bugwood.org
Source: www.forestryimages.org

Synonyms

Coelorhopalon obovatum (Berk.) Overeem
Hypoxylon polymorphum (Pers.) Mont.
Penzigia obovata (Berk.) Speg.
Sphaeria obovata Berk.
Sphaeria polymorpha Pers.
Xylaria corrugata Har. & Pat.
Xylaria obovata (Berk.) Berk.
Xylaria rugosa Sacc., (1906)
Xylosphaera obovata (Berk.) Dennis
Xylosphaera polymorpha (Pers.) Dumort.

Basionym

Sphaeria polymorpha Pers. 1797

Common name

In Indian traditional medicine (Ayurvedic medicine), the powdered fruit bodies, mixed in equal proportion with sugar, is used to promote lactation after birth (Rai et al., 1993).

This fungus is responsible for root rot, and the leaves of afflicted trees dry out and drop prematurely.  According to the Canadian Forest Service website's page, X. polymorpha is one of the few ascomycete species capable of decomposing the wood of sugar maple and box elder.

Fruit body: 3-8 cm tall, 1-3 cm wide, irregularly club-shaped (fingerlike), often knobby or gnarled, white to grayish and powdery initially (during the asexual stage), then black with a finely wrinkled or roughened or cracked surface.
Flesh: tough, white. The perithecia (spore-producing cavities) are just below the surface crust. The asci are 200 x 10 µm.
Spores: the ascospores are dark-brown to blackish, fusiform, smooth, 20-30 x 5-10 µm; the conidia are smaller, elongated or elliptical, smooth, and hyaline.
Habitat: gregarious on stumps and fallen timber of deciduous trees, including Acer rubrum, Coffea arabica, Platanus acerifolia and Shorea robusta (Sivanesan and Holliday, 1998). Season all year. Common. Because of the toughness of the species, the fruiting bodies can persist for a long time. In fact, one early paper (Barnes, 1940) reported finding a 16-year old specimen living on a piece of elm wood.
Edibility: Inedible.
Distribution: America and Europe.

From Cooke MC. 1871. Handbook of British Fungi: With Full Descriptions of all the species, and Illustrations of all the Genera. Vol 2. London: Macmillan and Co. pg. 789. The full text of this old classic is available for viewing in Google Books.

Bioactive compounds

2-Hexylidene-3-methylsuccinic acid, aka piliformic acid, is the major metabolite produced by X. polymorpha (Anderson et al., 1985).

This compound (shown above), which was later isolated from the marine fungus Halorosellinia oceanica BCC 5149, showed moderate cytotoxicity against KB and BC-1 cell lines (Chinworrungsee et al., 2001).

Dead man's fingers was shown to contain about 6% mannitol (dry weight), a sugar used as a diuretic agent (Snatzke and Wolff, 1987). Other compounds include 4-(3'-Acetyl-2',6'-dihydroxy-5'-methylphenyl)- 4-hydroxy- 2-methoxybutanoic acid (globoscinic acid) and 5-(3'-acetyl-2',6'-dihydroxy- 5'-methylphenyl)-3-methoxy- 2,3,4,5-terahydrofuran-2-one (globoscin) (Adeboya et al., 1995), and two cytotoxic cytochalasins 19,20-epoxycytochalasin Q and its deacetyl analog (Dagne et al., 1994). Of the latter two compounds, both were shown to be cytotoxic, but inactive in an HIV-protease inhibitory assay and a mechanism-based DNA damaging yeast assay.

Research has also gone into determining the optimal conditions for the production of X. polymorpha polysaccharides grown in liquid culture (Yang and Huaan, 2004).

Two new polypropionates designated as xylarinic acids A (4,6,8-trimethyl- 2,4-decadienoic acid) and B (2,4,6-trimethyl- 2-octenoic acid) were isolated from X. polymorpha fruiting bodies.  Both compounds displayed significant antifungal activity against the pathogenic plant fungi Pythium ultinum, Magnaporthe grisea, Aspergillus niger, Alternaria panax, and Fusarium oxysporium, but they did not show any antibacterial nor cytotoxic effects (Jang et al., 2007).

Tom Volk's fungus of the month, April 2000
Mushroom Expert
More pictures and description here at the Fungi on Wood pages
Another informative page from the Penn State New Kensington Virtual Nature Trail

References

Abate D, Abraham WR, Meyer H.
Cytochalasins and phytotoxins from the fungus Xylaria obovata.
Phytochem. 1997 44(8):1443-8.

Adeboya M, Edwards RL, Laessoe T, Maitland DJ, Whalley ASJ.
Metabolites of the higher fungi .28. Globoscinic acid and globoscin, a labile acid-lactone system from Xylaria globosa and Xylaria obovata.
J Chem Soc-Perk Trans. 1995 1(16):2067-72.
Abstract - RSC Publishing

Anderson JR, Edwards RL, Whalley AJS.
Metabolites of the higher fungi. 22. 2-butyl-3-methylsuccinic acid and 2-hexylidene-3-methylsuccinic acid from Xylariaceous fungi.
J Chem Soc Perk Trans I. 1985 7:1481-6.

Barnes B.
A note on longevity in Xylaria.
Trans Brit Mycol Soc. 1940 24(3/4):356.

Chinworrungsee M, Kittakoop P, Isaka M, Rungrod A, Tanticharoen M, Thebtaranonth Y.
Antimalarial halorosellinic acid from the marine fungus Halorosellinia oceanica.
Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2001 11(15):1965-9.

Dagne E, Gunatilaka AAL, Asmellash S, Abate D, Kingston DGI, Hofmann GA, Johnson RK.
2 new cytotoxic cytochalasins from  Xylaria obovata.
Tetrahedron. 1994 50(19):5615-20.

Fenwick GA.
Xylaria polymorpha in laboratory culture
Mycologist. 1994 8(4) 166-8.

Gunawan S, Steffan B, Steglich W.
Xylaral, a hydroxyphthalide derivative from fruiting bodies of Xylaria polymorpha (Ascomycetes).
Liebigs Annalen Der Chemie. 1990 (8):825-7.

Jang YW, Lee IK, Kim YS, , Lee S, Lee HJ, Yu SH, Yun BS.
Xylarinic acids A and B, new antifungal polypropionates from the fruiting body of Xylaria polymorpha.
J Antibiotics. 2007 60(11):696-9.

Rai  BK, Ayachi SS, Rai A.
A note on ethno-myco-medicines from central India
Mycologist. 1993 7(4):192-3.

Rogers JD, Callan BE.
Xylaria polymorpha and its allies in the continental USA.
Mycologia. 1986 78(3):391-400.
1st page from Jstor

Sivanesan A., Holliday P.
Xylaria polymorpha. [Descriptions of Fungi and Bacteria].
IMI Descriptions of Fungi and Bacteria. 1998 36:355.
CABAbstracts

Snatzke G, Wolff HP.
Mannitol from Xylaria polymorpha.
Zeitschrift für Mykologie. 1987 53(1):137-8.

Yang L, Huaan W.
Cultivation and polysaccharide extraction of Xylaria polymorpha.
Mycosystema. 2004 23(4):536-47.
CABAbstracts preview

Last modified: 01-Aug-2008

The violet webcap, Cortinarius violaceus (L.) Gray.
  Credit: User: WarX
  Source: French Wikipedia

Classification
 
Kingdom Fungi
Phylum Basidiomycota
Class Basidiomycetes
Order Agaricales
Family Cortinariaceae
Genus Cortinarius

Violet cort
Violet webcap
Dunkelvioletter Schleierling (German)

Description

Cap: 5-12 cm diameter, fleshy, rounded then flattened and bluntly umbonate, sometimes campanulate, dark violet, with rather wooly down becoming cracked into scales, margin at first incurved.
Stem: up to 10-12 cm long and 2.5 cm thick, dark violet color, thickened below into a bulb, fibrous and somewhat scaly with darker fibrils.
Gills: dark violet at first then flushed with the rust-brown spores, adnate then sometimes separating, broad, firm, rather distant and connected by veins. The gill edge consists of violet-colored, flask-shaped cystidia.
Flesh: bluish-violet or purple, darker in the stem, firm.
Spore print:  rust-brown.
Odor: smells slightly of cedarwood; no distinguishing taste.
Spores: yellow-brown, elliptical or pip-shaped, warted, 12-14 x 7-8 µm.

Spores of C. violaceus in Melzer's reagent.
Source: Madjack74, Wikimedia Commons.

Habitat: found on the ground in woods, especially under birch and pine. Autumn.

The rich color of the violet webcap is due to an ink which consists of Fe(III) ions and the amino acid β-dopa (Nussbaum et al., 1998).

Medicinal properties
Antitumor effects

Polysaccharides extracted from the mycelial culture of C. violaceus and administered intraperitoneally into white mice at a dosage of 300 mg/kg inhibited the growth of Sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich solid cancers by 100% and 90%, respectively (Ohtsuka et al., 1973).

Links

Go here for an interesting discussion on the difficulties of positively identifying specimens with only the photograph and lacking proper field notes

References

Nussbaum F, Spiteller P, Rueth M, Steglich, Wanner WB, Gamblin B, Stievano L, Wagner FE.
An iron(III)-catechol complex as a mushroom pigment.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1998 37(23):3292–5.
Abstract from Interscience

Ohtsuka S, Ueno S, Yoshikumi C, Hirose F, Ohmura Y, Wada T, Fujii T, Takahashi E.
Polysaccharides having an anticarcinogenic effect and a method of producing them from species of Basidiomycetes.
UK Patent 1331513, 26 September 1973.

Last modified: 17-Aug-2008

The sulphur knight, Tricholoma sulphureum (Bull.) P. Kumm.
Source: Wikipedia.

Agaricus sulphureus Bull.
Gymnopus sulphureus (Bull.) Gray
Tricholoma sulphureum (Bull.) P. Kumm.

Research suggests that the species Tricholoma bufonium (which is similar in appearance, but with a violet-brown cap color) should be treated as an infraspecific variant of T. sulphureum (Comandini et al., 2004).

Sulphur cavalier
Sulphur knight
Gas agaric
Stinker

Modifed from Bas, 1988. pg.147  (see Google book preview)

Cap: 2.5-7 cm diameter, hemispherical to convex with margin that is involute to deflexed, irregularly flattened (applanate) with or without slightly depressed center, with deflexed or reflexed margin, with undulating marginal zone, bright yellow with greenish tinge, at center soon with brown to red-brown tinges. Surface dry or slightly moist, satiny to minutely felted-tomentose.
Gills: distant, adnate, usually deeply sinuate, sometimes with decurrent tooth, ventricose, up to 10 mm broad, thick, sulphur-yellow with irregular, concolorous edge.
Stem: 3-7 cm tall x 0.5-1.5 cm diameter, cylindrical, sometimes curved, sometimes broadened or tapering towards base, bright yellow at apex, sulphur-yellow to greenish yellow below, striate with concolorous or darker fibrils, sometimes becoming more or less brownish fibrillose-squamulose with age in lower part. Context yellow.
Smell: unpleasant, very strong, like coal tar gas, also farinaceous when cut.
Taste: very unpleasant, farinaceous-rancid with acrid-bitter component.
Spores: 8-11 x 5-7 um, ellipsoid to oblong, smooth, often irregular.
Spore print: white.
Edibility: inedible - poisonous.
Habitat: solitary or in groups, ectomycorrhizal, associated with deciduous trees (quercus, fagus) rarely also with Pinus sylvestris in woods and at road-sides on sandy soils, probably on slightly richer sites, where the soil is mixed with loam.

Medicinal properties
Antitumor effects

Polysaccharides extracted from the mycelial culture of T. sulphureum and administered intraperitoneally into white mice at a dosage of 300 mg/kg inhibited the growth of Sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich solid cancers by 90% and 80%, respectively (Ohtsuka et al., 1973).

Links

There's a gallery of pictures at BioPix.

References

Bas C. 1988.
Flora Agaricina Neerlandica: Critical monographs on families of agarics and boleti occurring in the Netherlands. Vol 6. (ME Noordeloos, TH Kuyper, EC Vellinga, Eds.).
Taylor and Francis.

Comandini O, Haug I, Rinaldi AC, Kuyper TW.
Uniting Tricholoma sulphureum and T. bufonium.
Mycol Res. 2004 108(10):1162-71.

Deng H, Yao YJ.
Revision of three species of Tricholoma reported from China
Mycotaxon. 2005 92:77-84.

Ohtsuka S, Ueno S, Yoshikumi C, Hirose F, Ohmura Y, Wada T, Fujii T, Takahashi E.
Polysaccharides having an anticarcinogenic effect and a method of producing them from species of Basidiomycetes.
UK Patent 1331513, 26 September 1973.

Last modifed: 15-Aug-2008

Photo credit: Nathan Wilson.
Source: Wikipedia (listed as Mycena rorida).

Agaricus roridus Scop.
Mycena rorida (Scop.) Quél.
Roridella rorida (Scop.) E. Horak

Dripping bonnet
Slippery mycena
Schleimfuss-Helmling (German)

This species is recognizable by the thick, clear mucus covering the stem, from which it derives the epithet roridus (from the Latin roridus = bedewed). I would be interested in knowing the biochemical composition of this slime layer… perhaps it's a secreted source of anti-tumor β-glucans? Some carbohydrate analysis might do the trick.

R. roridus is reported to be bioluminescent, and one of several species (see others here) responsible for "foxfire", the phosphorescent glow sometimes given off by these fungi when composing dead wood.

Cap: 0.2-1 cm diameter, convex to broadly convex, often with a central depression and a straight margin that spreads and often becomes notched in age; color white to dirty yellowish; surface dry grooved when moist, but becoming even when dry.
Gills: adnate to decurrent; broad, white.
Stem: 1-4 cm high, very slender (~1-2 mm thick), elastic; concolorous with cap near stem apex; covered in a thick layer of clear slime that is thicker towards the base.
Flesh: thin, quite fragile; whitish.
Odor & taste: unknown.
Spores: ellipsoid, pointed at the base, amyloid, 8-12 x 4-5 µm. The basidia are 2-spored.
Spore print: white.
Habitat: gregarious on conifers debris (needles, twigs, etc.). Not uncommon. Found in Europe and eastern and western states of North America, Australia (Grgurinovic et al., 1981), and also reported recently in China (Tolgor, 2007). April to November.
Edibility: unknown.

The culture characteristics of both this species and various Mycena species have been reported (Treu and Agerer, 1990). In this particular study, the dripping bonnet, grown on malt agar, was not bioluminescent, suggesting it might require some specific nutrient that is in its normal diet of decaying wood, but absent in the malt agar.

Close-up of the dripping bonnet's gills and stem apex.
Photo credit: Copyright © Malcolm Storey, 2003.
Source: www.bioimages.org.uk.

Medicinal properties
Antitumor effects

Polysaccharides extracted from the mycelial culture of R. roridus and administered intraperitoneally into white mice at a dosage of 300 mg/kg inhibited the growth of Sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich solid cancers by 100% and 90%, respectively (Ohtsuka et al., 1973).

Links

Key to the Mycenas of Norway
Google book preview from David Arora's (1986) Mushroom's Demystified (p. 237), and another from Miller and Miller's (2006) North American Mushrooms: A Field Guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi (p. 167).

References

Grgurinovic C, Holland AA, Fuhrer BA.
Notes on Australian species of Mycena.
Meeting of the 13th International Botanical Congress, Syndey, NSW, Australia, Aug. 21-28, 1981.
Proc Int Bot Cong. 1981 Vol 13. 293 pp.

Horak E.
Mycena rorida (Fr) Quel and related species from Southern hemisphere.
Bull Soc Bot Sui. 1978 88(1-2) 20-9.

Ohtsuka S, Ueno S, Yoshikumi C, Hirose F, Ohmura Y, Wada T, Fujii T, Takahashi E.
Polysaccharides having an anticarcinogenic effect and a method of producing them from species of Basidiomycetes.
UK Patent 1331513, 26 September 1973.

Tolgor B.
Notes on Basidiomycetes of Jilin province (VIII).
J Fung Res. 2007 5(2):72-74.

Treu R, Agerer R.
Culture characteristics of some Mycena species.
Mycotaxon. 1990 38:279-310.

Last Modified: 15-Aug-2008