The Triumph of the Fungi: A Rotten History

by Nicholas P. Money

Everyone is aware of the nineteenth-century Irish potato famine, but fungal diseases of many other crops have had similarly apocalyptic consequences. Today, coffee, cacao, and rubber are threatened by fungi throughout the tropics. Indeed, fungi have carved their way through the ages, attacking every plant that we cultivate, constantly exploiting new hosts. In The Triumph of the Fungi, Nicholas Money offers an intimate picture of these pernicious microbes, the scientists who have sought to control them, and the people directly impacted by the loss of forest trees and cash crops. Even with the development of fungicides and other scientific breakthroughs, fungi continue to be unstoppable - this is the story of their triumph.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, History, Biology

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Nicholas Money is a mycologist, science writer, and professor at Miami University.

Reviews

[Kate Sherrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the author gets out of his own way and just lets us enjoy his material, Triumph of the Fungi: A Rotten History is as interesting and entertaining a book on the subject as one could wish. From Dutch Elm disease to the Potato Blight, Money surveys the history of fungal plant pathogens and their economic and aesthetic impact on the landscape in just the right amount of detail; one feels like a mycologist but isn't having to slog through a lot of soil chemistry data, which is enormously appealing to a lay reader like me.

What isn't appealing is a prevalence of what I can only describe as authorial snottiness; Money lets his personal opinion intrude on his storytelling just enough to be annoying, if not downright offensive: in his speculations about the origins of Dutch Elm disease, for instance, he tells us "I'm all in favor of blaming the Chinese, but in this instance they seem faultless"; pages later, describing the efforts of an early pioneer in research on a disease that all but wiped out coffee production on Ceylon/Sri Lanka, a pioneer who just happened also to be a reverend, he describes him as "a curate with presumable devotion to Christian superstitions" for really no reason at all other than to sound like a jerk, it feels like (to this reader, anyway).* Honestly, I can't believe an editor let stuff like this slide. Once I noticed this tendency, I couldn't stop seeing it, which often spoiled my enjoyment of a book for whom I am exactly the audience.

This is especially frustrating because the book is also full of fascinating bombshells of insight, as when Money points out how the results of a lot of early researchers in to Dutch Elm Disease had their results pretty much ignored because they were women, and a lot of dumb theories and ideas that came from men got credence, "frustrated progress in understanding the nature of the problem." Or when one Thomas Lipton -- yeah, that Thomas Lipton -- saw opportunity on Ceylon and started buying up rust-fungus-ruined coffee plantations to grow cheap tea on.* Or that "Plant pathologists can serve a [sic] excellent vectors of fungal disease." Or that the chromosomes packed into the zoospores of the potato blight fungus contain around 22,500 genes (for comparison, human chromosomes encode around 24,000).

See? Fascinating!

And we won't even talk about the chapter on chocolate. Oh my!** (Well, okay, maybe a little "...imagine massively swollen gentials in response to an infection of your pituitary gland and you'll grasp a human analogue of this plant disease.")

But then the obnoxiousness makes a return in a chapter about fungal pathogens on rubber trees, in which the author makes as many condom jokes as he possibly can and throws in one about an exporter waiting anxiously for a rubber stamp in a colonial office. Har.

Overall, though, this is a great read. I especially appreciate the criticisms of modern agriculture that are gently buried in this text: fungal disease epidemics only really happen in monocultures; the bigger the plantation**, the bigger the problem. And while Money (wonderful name for a writer about economic threats such as these, eh) never says it outright, really, the worst thing that ever happened to these plants we exploit isn't really the fungi; it's us. Or maybe we're the best thing. Maybe these plants, like some have said that maize/corn does, are actually exploiting us, giving us a little something useful in exchange for our efforts to spread them, keep them bug and disease free, and in general let them take over the earth at the expense of other plants not "smart" enough to provide something we find useful or tasty?

And then, maybe, aren't the fungi the really smart ones, since they've let us humans do all the work of setting them vast banquet tables for them to enjoy?

Lots to think about, when we think about fungi, no?

*Oddly, the victim of this barb, Rev. Miles Berkeley, gets spoken of in seriously glowing terms later in the book. So, you know, why even make a remark like that in the first place? Once I got to the chapter wherein Money describes Berkeley as a "great man" all I could think about was this stupid dis earlier in the book. ARGH.

**And this after Lipton got into the retail business after his family fled the potato famine in Ireland, so "it might be said that Lipton was an improbable beneficiary... of two of history's worst fungal epidemics."

***Theobroma cacao... food of the gods, threatened by, among other things, Witches' broom/escoba de bruja.

****Some nicely subtle digs at slavery there, too.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking and engaging read about mankind's ongoing struggle with plant pathogens studied by mycologists - not only fungi, but also oomycetes or water molds, which are more closely related to kelp than to fungi. The author contends that monocultures make us very vulnerable to these pathogens, and presents evidence that the pathogens are winning.
Water molds caused the Irish potato famine, sudden oak death which recently killed huge numbers of a huge variety of trees and shrubs in northern California and Europe, including redwood and Douglas fir, and jarrah dieback, which killed over half of plant species in infested areas of Australia. Most fungi are not harmful, and many are very valuable, but some threaten our supply of rubber, coffee, chocolate, soybeans, rice, corn, wheat, white pines, and have wiped out the American Chestnut and most elms. Life has always been an evolutionary struggle among species. We most commonly think of the struggle between predator and prey, but for large animals and plants, the main struggle is with pathogens and parasites: bacteria, viruses, and small animals as well as fungi and oomycetes. Just as past progress against infectious diseases is threatened by evolution of bacterial pathogens, mainly due to excessive use of those antibiotics, past progress against the diseases of plants is threatened by evolution of the plant pathogens, and by their transport around the world. Many fungi and oomycetes are particularly good at traveling because their spores are so light and numerous that winds can easily transport them vast distances.

[Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this dive into some of the most devastating fungal infections threatening us throughout the last century (and earlier, but we just called them demons before that and sacrificed a dog to Robigus to prevent crop death to minimal effect). Nicholas Money has a talent for bringing humor to science that teachers around the world could benefit to learn, but I guess when your name is money you learn to be funny.

My only complaint is that while the author was happy to mock British colonial practices in some chapters, he didn't mention Britain's role in the Irish Potato Famine's deadliness to the Irish people through their draconian control of what crops the Irish were allowed to keep versus what was only grown for export (though he did excuse himself by saying that isn't his forte and he'll focus on the blight).

[Glen]

Chatty introduction to the wild world of fungi! White Pine Blister rust and Phytophthora ramorum (aka Sudden Oak Death) earn dramatic treatment.

[Zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining overview of Fungi and our inability to prevent their movement.

[Velociraptor666 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun, interesting, and informative. I enjoyed reading this very much. What may seem as a dry subject to some is depicted in an entertaining way that is just a pleasure to read.