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Chris -- 2018-04-11
At our local mycological society we have an event called “mushroom of the month.†One of the members, often one of the newer ones, shows a common mushroom that s/he found and explains how the identification was made. Last night the (nervous) person talking about the mushroom of the month brought an Artist’s Conk (Ganoderma applanatum) to talk about. He referred to it as a “polyspore mushroom.â€
An interesting error. He meant “polypore,†the generic name for a stalkless mushroom with bolete-like pores. The medial “s†was inserted, I assume, because mushrooms and spores have thick semantic links. The slip may also have been catalysed by the name of the popular antibiotic ointment, Polysporin.
The mushroom that triggered the “spore†mistake is, by the way, a champion spore producer in Kingdom Fungi. Some species of Ganoderma can release several billion spores in one day. I’ve seen the whole side of a stump coated with the output of one of these conks. Convection currents spread these microspores in all directions, even lifting them onto the top of the mushroom.
The spores of some species of Ganoderma are sold as a herbal medicine. If each spore were worth a penny, a single productive conks could pay off the U. S. national debt in only two or three millennia. The individual spores are worth quite a bit less than a penny, though–health food stores that sell Ganoderma powder exchange some 70,000,000 of these tiny spores for a penny. Still, the project may be worth considering. If all of the trees in the U.S. died and every dying tree hosted three productive Ganoderma conks for one month out of each year, the U. S. debt could dissolved in a few decades.
A look at the web shows that others have made the same “polyspore†substitution. Three of the many examples:
Gardening/nature site: “Preferred food source for larvae are polyspore fungii but other fungii may also be used as host.â€
Another comment on a gardening site: “Maybe this Violet toothed polyspore was used in some witches brew.?â€
Label on a mushroom picture: “shelf mushroom ( polyspore )â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I did like fungii in the first example you gave. This spelling might be more naturally pronounceable as funj-eye or fun-jy, or even a mix of the two, than the problematic original: is it fun-guy or fungy? I suspect that many pass both versions through their head whenever they say the word, as I do.
I also like the connection you made between the “polyspore” and the prodigious spore production. The prefix poly is generally understood to mean “many, several”. It has another meaning that might fit the bracket fungi, of “excessive, too much”, that I’ve had to accustom myself to in the categorization of water bodies as “polysaprobic”, meaning overloaded with organic matter and devoid of oxygen, from Gk. sapro-, for rotten or putrid, “polyhumic”, meaning dark with dissolved tannins, and sometimes “polytrophic”, meaning overloaded with nutrients.
But who could not be attracted by the name of the beast: the Artist’s Conk. The artist part I get; it follows from the Latin species name, which evokes beautiful, lustrous, flat skin—just right for etching in or painting on. But conk? Nose, seashell, blow to the head, or horse chestnut?
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But conk? Nose, seashell, blow to the head, or horse chestnut?
I too was a bit perplexed by the ‘conk’ but assumed it was named for its resemblance to the flaring lip of the conch, which online dictionaries assure me is often pronounced conk in the US. A cross-sectioned conker looks similar, too.
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