Talk:Auriscalpium vulgare

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Auriscalpium vulgare/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk) 23:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd love to find one of these, but no luck yet...

• Good luck! This seems like one you'd have to be crawling on your hands and knees to find (although that's a common posture for real mushroom hunters). I have a Scots pine in my front yard, so this coming year I plan to collect the cones and bury them, see what happens .... Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "has a dark brown, cap covered" Lose the comma?

• Yes. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• In the prose, you imply that the Duchess's collection was the first ever, as opposed to the first in Britain.

• Reworded. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "by the English botanist, Reverend John Lightfoot" if retaining "the", remove the comma, if retaining the comma, change "the" to "a"?

• Did the latter, changed to "an". Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "The species was transferred to its current genus in 1821 by Samuel Frederick Gray, who made it the type species of the genus Auriscalpium." Odd way of saying that, rephrase? Perhaps also specify that he called it vulgare?

• Rephrased and specified. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "spine-fungus" spine fungi? And links to clavarioid fungi and bolete would be useful?

• I reworded an earlier linked instance of "teeth" fungi to "spine fungi to be consistent throughout. As for bolete I assume you meant poroid? Linked now. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps experiment with moving the mycomorphbox to the description section? It seems a little odd that it is in the taxonomy section, while the cladogram is alongside the description.

• I moved the cladogram to the left side, is that better? I suppose if necessary I could dump the pic of Maggie Bentinck to make more room in that section (although I'd rather not... it's not too often I can add "human interest" in a mushroom article!) Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "it has also been referred to as the "fir-cone Hydnum", when it was still a member of that genus" You swap tense

• Tenses aligned. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "several fruit bodies arise from a common base" Does "fruit body" not refer to the whole mushroom? If so, that'd be like saying "several trees from the same trunk"?

• Reworded and moved this down to the stem discussion. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "and reaches diameters of 0.5–2 cm (0.2–0.8 in)" "reaches" implies that you are going to give the upper limit

• Reworded. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "ashen" is a lovely word which you could use instead of "ashey"- ashey's probably better, but I like the way "ashen" sounds :)

• More poetic perhaps, but I think "pale" or "anemic" rather than ash-colored when I hear it. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "The surface is covered with hairy fibers (especially near the base), and a dark chestnut-brown color" Missing a word or two?

  "is". Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• cortical, fibrillose, laterally- a little technical. I don't mind them, others might- I'd avoid them, personally

• Have reworded or removed them. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "A drop of potassium hydroxide applied to the surface of the mushroom will instantly stain black" Picky, but would it not be the mushroom staining, rather than the KOH?

• Not picky at all, just correct. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "The mushroom is generally considered inedible because of its toughness and small size.[22] However, an 1887 textbook noted that it was "commonly eaten in France and Italy".[23]" Perhaps merge the sentences?

• United by semicolon. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "slender extensions that attach the spore to the basidium" spores to the basidia? You refer to sterigmata as opposed to a sterigmatum.

• Corrected. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "agglutinated"?

• Now "clumped together". Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "gloeocystidia"?

• Now wikt'd on 1st occurrence. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• (Just as an aside, I feel a long way from qualified to comment on the details about the hyphae- it reads well, but I'm just gonna have to accept on good faith that it makes sense. I don't think this is a criticism; you're talking about something complex and advanced, you aren't going to be able to dumb it down far enough for everyone to understand it, but for it to still be concise and useful.)

• Yeah, I know. Per my usual strategy, I'm hoping some time away from the article will help me achieve "Strategic distance" so that I may rework the prose to achieve a better balance between scientific accuracy and layman-readability. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Category:Fungi in cultivation?

• Nah, that's for fungi people would actually want to eat :) Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "inoculum block"?

• Reworded. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• "mycelium" Link? Do you mean for this to be singular?

• Like I told you before, I always get this wrong ... Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• I see you define gloeocystidia here, but didn't earlier.
• What's the point of growing them in culture? Does it serve any real purpose?

• At the time, it was useful for researchers to be able to grow this and other related fungi in pure culture to compare microscopic characteristics and make inferences about phylogenetic relationships. It was (and still is) novel that they were able to make it form fruit bodies as well. Today, the necessity of this technique for phylogenetics has been much reduced by the prevalence of DNA analysis, so I'm probably gonna chop this section down to a single paragraph before FAC. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• If it's helpful, Sterry notes that it grows on buried/partially buried pine cones, while Phillips notes "buried decaying" pine cones, and adds that it can be found all year, and Kibby says it is found in autumn. (I updated the page numbers, didn't update the style.)
  • Sterry, Paul; Hughes, Barry (2009). Complete Guide to British Mushrooms & Toadstools. HarperCollins. p. 280. ISBN 9780007232246.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Phillips, Roger (1981). Mushrooms and Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe. London: Pan Books. p. 242. ISBN 0330264419.
  • Kibby, Geoffrey (2003). Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and Northern Europe. Hamlyn. p. 208. ISBN 9780753718650.

• Thanks, I added buried/partially buried from Sterry. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Great article, cool mushroom. I take it that this is the next FAC? (I was probably harsher on it than I would normally be at GAC, but I don't expect you'll mind!) J Milburn (talk) 00:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Probably not the next FAC (need time away for strategic distance), but it's certainly in the queue. Thanks for a thorough review, it definitely helped. Sasata (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Looking good, promoted. I look forward to seeing this at FAC :) J Milburn (talk) 11:08, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

comments

Taxonomy

• Fries is not really necessary here (I would only include him if he was relevant to explaining why the name does not respect normal priority).
• Crossland just seemed too anecdotal (plus call me stuck up but if I were to cite a tiny thing like that, I would insist to use the actual report, not a second-hand version, and unfortunately the 1908 volume of The Naturalist is not online.)
• I'm not entirely happy with saying Gray "made it the type species" of his new genus, since he did not made any type designation, but it would probably be too wordy to explain that, while not mentioning it's the type species here and why would be inappropriate. I may figure something out later.

• Perhaps it would be better to just say that Gray transferred it to Auriscalpium (citing Gray 1821), and in a separate sentence, that it's the type species (citing Fungorum), to avoid linking the two? Sasata (talk) 21:31, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Description

• Significantly reorganized, in particular to try and group all the measurements and eliminate the unnecessary ones (I don't think specifying an exact length of the spines is useful here). You'll want to check everything is still properly referenced.
• There might be a need for an addition to cortex (botany) since the fungal definition of cortex (as far as I can tell. I couldn't find a good, clear one!) basically covers "bark" on all nonsporiferous surfaces of fungi and lichens, not only the stem as in higher plants. Dict. of the fungi to the rescue?

• All they say is "a more or less thick outer covering"; does this seem like a useful addition to the cortex article? Sasata (talk) 19:27, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Microscopic characteristics

• Regarding the septal characters, I think it needs to be properly characterized:

Ultrastructural images of septa of some species in the Russulales have been published; however low magnification and/or nonmedian sections prevented data entry for many septal characters. In the Russulales only Hericium coralloides and Artomyces pyxidatus (= Clavicorona pyxidata) have character states entered in the database for more than 50% of the characters that apply to nonbasidial cells in taxa of the Basidiomycota. Also A. pyxidatus is the only russuloid species with data on nuclear division. The results presented here illustrate the extent of data needed to document septal structure and nuclear division. Even within presumably well studied groups such as the Agaricomycotina we report a novel septal character state. The organization of the spindle pole region during nuclear division might provide a morphological feature characteristic of the Russulales.

Celio & al. (2007), references removed

So it was studied to fill in additional characters for the Russulales (which are said to be patchy), it is not clear from this (or the later mention: "Extended septal pore cap margins as seen in A. vulgare is not a character state at this time and thus is described in the notes field of its database entry. Further examination of other species of Russulales will determine whether this character state is phylogenetically informative.") whether the character is novel for Russulales alone or Agaricomycotina as a whole. Indeed I'm not even 100% sure the character mentioned in the intro is those pore cap margins!

• Overall I'm not sure what to do with this (or the culture discussion). I suspect it might be more interesting to shorten these to the bare minimum (especially since the papers are OA) by saying what was studied, why, and the interesting facts unearthed (i.e. a potential alternate relation between Hymenochaetales and Russulales and an unexpected character and so on.) rather than trying to summarise what are ultimately domewhat abstruse and possibly unnecessarily pointed description. For this reason I have tentatively skipped over the culture section.

• I've reorganized the paragraph about additional characters to hopefully give it more context about its usefulness in the grand scheme of things. Also trimmed a paragraph from the culture description (might chop more later). Sasata (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Fruit body development

• "the fruit body can proliferate by growing additional fruit bodies on all parts of its upper and lower surfaces." What does this even mean? Are you sure the extra bodies don't develop from some part of the mycelium? As is it sounds like you're describing a weird branching mushroom (like the one on the left of the taxobox). Is this the case or is this referring to the way if often grows in group?

• Yes, it's a weird mushroom that can grow fruit bodies out of existing fruit bodies; see this. I'll think about how I can reword to make this less unclear. Sasata (talk) 07:13, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

• I can easily think of a few ways to do it—I just don't have the time to do it right now. The issue is that I wasn't sure if the interpretation was correct. Circéus (talk) 17:02, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

• It might be interesting to mention that occasional cap-less specimen are found in nature (investigating these was, AFAICT, one of the reasons for Harvey's study), and the nature of the growth (different from that of many more mushrooms that are grown "as eggs") is the reason why this occurs.

• Now mentioned in the description section, and with more context in the fruit body development section. Sasata (talk) 21:23, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Distribution

• There's not much to do about it, but I really wish I could figure out a useful link for that "Laojun mountain area". I have a suspicion this is the same as "Liming - Laojunshan National Geopark", but I can't find good coordinates for that to comfirm.
  • I whipped up a stub. Sasata (talk) 04:24, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
    • Nice work, there! Circéus (talk) 06:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Circéus (talk) 22:01, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Although I like that the new image shows a nice example of a dark, older fruit body, I also liked the fact that the fingers in the first image provided immediate and clear scale references. Abstract measurements do not quite, IMO, translate just how TINY those are compared to that picture. Circéus (talk) 06:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

• Point taken. Fingers returned. Sasata (talk) 18:40, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

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