David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
A bizarre African mushroom that triggers snarky laughter and double-entendre jokes, has brought a fresh measure of dubious fame to an eminent Bay Area botanist and his colleague working on a tiny cluster of African islands far older than Darwin's fabled Galápagos.
The fungus is a new plant species called Phallus dreweseii, and aside from provoking snide giggles, it bespeaks the extraordinary biodiversity of those remote islands that are now threatened by the world's appetite for oil.
The botanist is Dennis A. Desjardin, a world-roaming mycologist at San Francisco State University. His colleague - for whom Desjardin named the mushroom - is Robert Drewes, a herpetologist best known for the huge variety of frogs he has discovered throughout Africa.
Drewes has led three major expeditions to the island nation of São Tómé and Príncipe, located in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa. Because so little is known of the plant and animal life on the islands, Drewes has encouraged specialists in every field of biology to explore their mist-shrouded mountains, grasslands and forests.
Desjardin was there two years ago, and along with Bryan Perry, his San Francisco State student, has recently published a report on his latest discovery in Mycologia, the leading journal of fungus science.
The new plant species, he said in an interview, is "a tiny little thing, barely 2 1/2 inches long and thinner than your little finger.
"I found it growing out of an old rotting log in a forest on a mountaintop, and after I spotted the first one, I saw several more right in the same spot," he said.
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