Thanks for asking! The fungus is commonly called ergot. Here's a short article I just filched off the Web:
One man's paean to mushrooms, mold, and mildew
Sunday, November 21, 1999By MARY ESCH
The Associated Press
Be grateful for fungus. Sure, it's to blame for athlete's foot, moldy bread, and that slimy mildew on your shower curtain. But without fungi, there would be no beer, no penicillin, no gorgonzola cheese. And we'd be up to our necks in dead plants and animals if there were no fungi to rot them.
In fact, fungus has had a key role in human history. Just ask George Hudler, professor of plant pathology at Cornell University.
Better yet, read his book.
In "Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds" (Princeton University Press, $29.95), Hudler shares an infectious fascination with fungus that overtook him like a religious conversion 30 years ago, when he was in forestry school.
The epiphany came as he peered through a microscope at mold spores, "lined up in a row like eggs inside a balloon." At that moment, Hudler says, "my life took on new meaning." He was hooked on fungus.
For the past 10 years, Hudler has shared his fungal fervor with Cornell students in a popular undergraduate course by the same name as his book, published this year.
Hudler introduces the book with a series of stories demonstrating the role of fungus in history. For instance, the infamous witch trials in Massachusetts had their roots in fungus-infected rye that sickened people and cattle so they displayed symptoms attributed to evil spells.
Ergot poisoning from moldy grain also was responsible for numerous epidemics in Europe over the centuries. The hideous illness, sometimes called Saint Anthony's fire, caused burning pain before limbs would blister, rot, and fall off.
Hudler tells how a chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in the 1930s isolated a potent hallucinogenic compound from the ergot fungus: LSD. It was enthusiastically embraced by the CIA as a potential mind-control agent in the 1950s, before it became a popular recreational drug.
Some scholars believe the great philosophers of ancient Greece -- including Socrates and Plato -- gained inspiration through the ceremonial drinking of a secret, sacred beverage in the temple of Eleusis. The hallucinogenic purple potion is believed to have contained a crude form of LSD, derived from ergot-infected grain.
Ergot derivatives also are used in modern migraine medications such as Cafergot and Ergate.
A toxin produced by another grain mold causes internal bleeding and strangulation death. The U.S. government accused the Soviet Union of dropping that toxin in the form of "yellow rain" during the Vietnam War. But some scientists later theorized that what villagers called yellow rain was actually the feces of massive swarms of bees, Hudler writes.
Molds are not the only fungal sources of toxic, hallucinogenic, or medically useful compounds. Mushrooms had a celebrated role in human culture long before Timothy Leary extolled the mind-altering virtues of psilocybin from "magical mushrooms" in the psychedelic Sixties.
Several centuries ago in Siberia, Hudler writes, an explorer discovered that people enlivened life in a harsh land by eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Those too poor to afford the fungi enjoyed its effects secondhand -- by drinking the urine of the mushroom-eaters.
Some scholars believe the same mushroom -- fly agaric -- was the Soma, a mysterious life force worshiped by ancient Hindus and a factor in the genesis of modern religions. The Soma was passed from one person to another through urine. It is said to have had one foot and a red-and-white head -- a good description of the fly agaric, or Amanita muscaria.
There is evidence that the ancient Mayans also used the fly agaric in shamanic rituals. And some scholars have suggested that the red-topped mushroom, rather than an apple, was the forbidden fruit in the story of Adam and Eve.
Interwoven with Hudler's entertaining accounts of the role of fungus in history, culture, medicine, and everyday life are detailed explanations of the underlying science -- including classification, structure, chemistry, and growth habits.
For instance, he describes how a fungus called Phytophthora infestans awakens from winter dormancy to produce wind-blown spore capsules, which disgorge swimming spores onto potato plants. The spores germinate, grow threadlike into the plant, and produce enzymes that digest tissue. Infected potatoes turn to putrid mush.
That's what happened in 1845, when a devastating blight led to the Irish potato famine. More than a million people died.
Lest his readers write off fungi as vile and destructive, Hudler devotes the latter half of the book to the benefits derived from fungi. Penicillin, for instance. And Cyclosporin, a mold-derived drug that helps prevent rejection of transplanted organs.
The shiitake mushroom, long used in East Asian medicine as well as cuisine, produces potent anti-tumor and antiviral compounds that are being investigated as treatments for cancer and AIDS. Some common North American mushrooms also have been shown in clinical trials to have therapeutic effects against cancer, hypertension, and hepatitis B.
Hudler devotes a chapter to the biology of yeast and how its metabolic processes are put to use in making bread, beer, and wine.
"Let me assure you that for all the problems fungi have caused, they have also extended our lives and made them far more enjoyable," Hudler writes. He invites any reader who remains unconvinced to stop by his office at Cornell.
"We'll chat," he writes, "for as long as it takes."
