Hot lips! Another fungus naming competition...

When it comes to naming some of the weird and wonderful types of fungus in the wild, we've had all sorts, including Spongebob Squarepants (as discussed in my earlier post). 

Now we have another imaginative, name for an interesting type of fungus : this time it's "hotlips". 

Hotlips fungus!

The fungus — more accurately known as Octospora humosa — was given the name by 12-year-old Rachael Blackman, who proposed the name in a competition to find a better way of describing the appearance of this lurid orange, moss-dwelling fungus.

"They looked a bit like lips and I thought the name suited it really well because of the bright orange colour," said Rachael. "It's exciting to know it will always be called hotlips."

More than 5,000 entrants suggested new names for 10 endangered and overlooked species lacking a common name. Hotlips is a member of a group of fungi called discomycetes, or "discos". The judges for the competition, which is run by Natural England and the Guardian, said they loved the notion of a "hotlips disco".

"It's very simple, it's very apt and it's the kind of thing that people will remember, which cuts to the heart of the competition," said Pete Brotherton, head of biodiversity at Natural England and one of a judging panel including Guardian columnist George Monbiot and Liz Holden of the British Mycologists Society.

Ascot hat mushrooms

Among nine other winners, who will receive a certificate from Natural England, was Diane Williamson who came up with Ascot hat — aka Xerocomus bubalinus — a pink-tinted mushroom similar to porcini that would not look out of place as race-going headgear and was first recorded near Ascot.

Brotherton said it was very appropriate that Rachael had won this year's competition. "They [younger people] look at things with a creativity and wonder that adults have sometimes lost touch with," he said. "She's helping to grow the next generation of naturalists and maybe she'll be one of them."

New mushroom named after Spongebob Sqaurepants

Of all the stupid things to name a wonderful new species of mushroom after... a yellow pant-wearing cartoon character really takes the biscuit.

But low and behold, the people who discovered this sea-sponge shaped mushroom in the forests of Borneo have done just that.

Researchers at San Francisco State University christened the unusual fungus Spongiforma squarepantsii.  

Spongebob Squarepants

The full article can be read here on on the BBC website.

The BBC article, which was informed by a story in the scientific journal Mycologia, said that in addition to its resemblance to a sea sponge, under a scanning electron microscope, the spore-producing area of the fungus looks like a seafloor carpeted in tube sponges.

It was these characteristics that further convinced the researchers to name the species after the cartoon character.

With its odd shapes and fruity scent, I think this mushroom could have inspired a little more imagination — something like say, Sophiforma Haydocksii.