Researcher finds new types of mushrooms while walking

The researchers named the species Microstrobilinia castran and have now presented it in the journal “Mycological Progress”. WSL’s mushroom team conducted an extensive search of worldwide mushroom archives and genetic databases, which yielded no comparable mushrooms. Now it is clear: this is not only a new mushroom species, but also a new genus. The genus is a taxonomic category superior to the species in biology. For example, spruce is a genus, silver fir (Abies alba) and red spruce (Abies nordmanniana) are species.

130 more sites discovered
The joy among the researchers was correspondingly great. “I even looked for the spruce trees on my hiking holidays,” says WSL researcher Ludwig Beenken, the publication’s first author. The search identified the fungus in about 130 locations, on forest meadows and in mountain forests in the Jura, the Alps and the Black Forest.

The researchers are still puzzling over the origin of Microstrobilinia castran. Beenken suspects that the fungus was once brought in with park trees. Over the past 200 years, the search for mushrooms in Europe had been so fierce that such a striking, rather large cupcake would hardly have gone unnoticed, he said.

Mold makes spruce barren
Although the fungus feeds on spruce pollen and destroys the male flowers in the process – spruces are effectively castrated – it currently poses no threat to the trees. Nevertheless, the researchers will monitor the fungus in the future. After all, you never know whether a fungus will suddenly cause major problems, for example if it spreads faster due to global warming.