Atomic Nerds

So in my last Cooking Noob post, the majority of the comments I got about from friends later was not so much about the food but about an aside I had made while slicing mushrooms about how they’re a bit phallic and coincidentally also the sexual organ of the fungus and not actually the main fungal body itself.

Field biologists, who deserve their reputation within biology for being the most, ah, eccentric group, have one-upped me this week.

One of the more venerable models of field biology, if you’re not going to go sit on your ass following a group of social animals for nine months out of the year and write about them for the other three (like being a soap opera writer, except much less comfortable), is getting a whole pack of them together, begging your respective parent institutions for some money, and going off somewhere remote where the species are barely known at all and spending all your time on expense on discovery and collection- finding things no one else has seen, sticking them in jars or rough and ready taxidermy jobs, and once verifying their newness upon returning home, reporting the basic details of their existence to the world and then the best part, giving it a name.

Well, a herpetologist named Robert Drewes who is apparently well experienced in this sort of expeditionary science, having already gotten a frog and a snake named after him, made what was either the serendipitous or unfortunate choice to include a mycologist friend of his on his next trip to Remote Island No One That Speaks Latin Ever Goes, Africa. As hoped for, they netted some new species, including the mycologist, who discovered a new species of stinkhorn.

Now, when I say table mushrooms are phallic, you need a little bit of imagination. However, stinkhorns look like this:

The new species looks like this:

Given a world of possibilities, the mycologist opted not to name it after himself (although so far as I know he might already have half a dozen mushrooms named after him), but after his esteemed friend, colleague, and expedition leader: thus the newest species to join Dr. Drewes’ list of conquests is Phallus Drewesii. The genus name actually isn’t new- Phallus is a pre-existing and well-known genus, the one to which the common stinkhorn belongs. Dr. Drewes got the honor partly because he is the esteemed expedition leader, fearless leader, and all-father, but mostly because it’s one of the smallest representatives of the genus ever discovered.

And thus, by the hallowed rules of taxonomy, will be how a camp dick joke became immortalized in the Linnean system forever. I love science so much right now I think I may cry.

*sniff*

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