Pink Coral Fungus

[tifferella]

Help my son has a science project to make on pink coral fungus and it cannot spoil, has be free standing, be labeled, and be orginal. I am not finding any ideas can anyone give suggestions?

[ChrisG]

Hi Tifferella,
Welcome to the Ask an Expert forum. Did you son choose this topic? Is he expected to conduct an experiment, or would it suffice to write a research paper?

Chris

[barretttomlinson]

Hi,

I am unsure what you are trying to do. I think you are trying to collect and preserve a large multi-cellular organism so that colors and morphology are preserved indefinitely, a tall order.

Here is a manual for collecting and propagating fungi in general. It is 3.4 Mbytes and loads slowly, so link to it only intentionally:

http://www.spc.int/PPS/SAFRINET/fung-scr.pdf

This reference might be helpful(scroll down webpage to see first page of article)

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-5 ... 0.CO%3B2-R

Another set of ideas:

http://www.nemf.org/files/guidelines/Co ... _study.pdf

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/herbarium.html

http://www.fungibank.csiro.au/topic_5_2_1.htm

http://ilmbwww.gov.bc.ca/risc/pubs/tebi ... her-10.htm

The bottom line here is most advice seems to recommend drying as the best practical method to preserve fungi specimens, but that is a relatively poor method in terms of keeping specimens like they do in their native habitat. Color photographs of undisturbed specimens are very useful. I am not sure how helpful this information will prove, but wish you the best of success in your project.

Best regards,

Barrett Tomlinson