Birthday and fungi.......

Birthdays are just annual memos of adding a number to ones age; it’s a time-bound message or reminder of the process of growth. It is realised that as one gets aged, the ability to respond or react is subdued, both physically and mentally. Yet, thanks to advancement in science and greater awareness of hygiene in living conditions; most perform well sufficiently long period of time, these days......

Stepping into 69, I fondly greet my dear and near ones, friends and all well-wishers for making our life meaningful..........

 (In front of Murudeshwar temple)

In 1993, I described, illustrated and named an interesting and novel asexual-morph fungus as Xenoheteroconium bicolor Bhat W.B. Kendrick & Nag Raj, (Bhat et al. 1993, in Mycotaxon) isolated from decaying leaf litter, collected from Agumbe, a small village in malnad region of Karnataka. This region, earlier called the Cherrapunji of southern India because of very high yearly rainfall, had thick, moist-deciduous forests those days....... 

This microscopic, saprophytic, hyphomycetous fungus, Xenoheteroconium bicolour, was interesting in that it produced two types of septate conidia: first, long primary conidia developed holoblastically, in small acropetal chains, on mononemtous conidiophores; second, short secondary conidia developed as lateral branches, on primary conidia.

  

 (Xenoheteroconium bicolour from India)

I had been to Agumbe a few times subsequently, accompanying students on field expeditions. I always had a feeling in my mind that I will see Xenoheteroconium again, because it has been my thinking that fungi are always there in nature.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the fungus again.... Such issues when get recapitulated in our minds, thoughts often come; where are these fungi......?

During my recent visit to Dali University in China, I saw a M.Sc. dissertation in the Department of Agriculture and Biotechnology, with description and illustration of Xenoheteroconium bicolor that they sourced from leaf litter collected from the forests of Yunnan Province, China, in 2010.  I saw hardly any difference; morphologically, it was the same fungus as ours....!  

   

(Xenoheteroconium bicolour from China)

Perusal of literature indicates that some of the fungi described from the forests of India are rediscovered/redescribed from the jungles of other Asian and Latin American countries. From look, they all seem similar! I call this a sort of 'discontinuous distribution' of fungi across the globe.......... 

This of course tells that fungi are everywhere...!

D. Jayarama Bhat