Fungus

Q.Thank you for printing the vinegar treatment for foot fungus. My husband has had so-called jungle rot since his days as a soldier in Vietnam. It's been incurable, but now it is all but gone, with only a few soaks needed every so often to keep it from coming back. My father, an eye doctor, told an elderly patient about vinegar. She was about to have a toenail amputated by another doctor because the fungus could not be cured. She started soaking her foot and saved her toenail. A.Dermatologists groan when we write about home remedies for nail fungus.

Eight U.S. Marines died as a result of an explosion on a U.S. Army base in Hawthorne, Nevada Monday night while on a training exercise. This tragic story has been carried extensively by The Washington Post as well as national electronic and broadcast media outlets. The Sun mustered no mention of this incident until Thursday ("Severna Park Marine dies in Nev. accident," March 21). A front-page story on a flower fungus was deemed more newsworthy by the editors of your once-respected publication.

Biologists have found what they believe is the first evidence that Maryland bats are now infected with white nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has killed more than a million hibernating bats since 2006, devastating colonies from New England to Virginia. A state biologist conducting a bat survey Friday found dead and weakened bats in a cave on private property near Cumberland, the Department of Natural Resources reported Wednesday. About three-quarters of the winged mammals had the telltale white fungus on their muzzles and other exposed skin.

My apples looked good until recently. Now they have tiny black spots and gray blotches that look like mildew but are dry. Are they ruined? Rains last month created conditions for two fungi: flyspeck and sooty blotch. Both of these fungi can be washed off. Soak and scrub off or just peel the apples. Fortunately, they don't affect eating quality. The leaves of my rhododendron are getting rough and brown patches. Is this a fungus I should spray? This time of year, those symptoms would be caused by the snowy tree cricket.

Eight U.S. Marines died as a result of an explosion on a U.S. Army base in Hawthorne, Nevada Monday night while on a training exercise. This tragic story has been carried extensively by The Washington Post as well as national electronic and broadcast media outlets. The Sun mustered no mention of this incident until Thursday ("Severna Park Marine dies in Nev. accident," March 21). A front-page story on a flower fungus was deemed more newsworthy by the editors of your once-respected publication.

Our cherry tree was oozing sap all over and had dark dead patches on the trunk and branches. The tree service said it had a fungal root rot and we had to cut it down. Can we plant another fruit tree or a vegetable garden when that fungus is in the soil? Will it sicken us? Your tree's disease symptoms match leucostoma canker, also known as cytospora, which is not a soil fungus and doesn't affect humans. Replant with confidence. In the future, take precautions to prevent a stone fruit (cherry, peach, apricot)

Our old red maple fell in a storm. When we had it removed, we were told it had root fungus and we should not plant a replacement tree on the same spot. I planned to replace this tree with a tulip poplar. How close to the original spot can I safely plant a sapling? Because you are planting a different species, you can plant in the same spot, but do move the plant a few feet away from the ground-up stump. Chips from the stump mix with the soil and bind up nitrogen as they decompose. Your new tree will need soil nitrogen for growth.

Q. My mulched beds have small brightly colored mounds of what looks like a fungus growing on them, but they are dry. Is it a fungus and will it harm my plants? A. The odd looking organism you have discovered is a plasmodium and not a fungus. It lives on decaying organic matter, such as mulch. This type of plasmodium is relatively common and though it looks unsightly, it will not harm your plants. Because it does no harm to plants, I would suggest that you simply turn it into the mulch with a shovel.

It practically killed off the elm tree, caused the Irish potato famine and has been labeled the world's largest living organism.Fungus -- a life form that attacks athletes' feet and sprouts as mushrooms -- is nowhere more abundant than in the National Fungus Collections stored at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.The collections, put together and owned jointly by the U.S. Agricultural Research Service and the Smithsonian Institution, make up the largest storehouse of fungus in the world, serving as a repository for about 1 million specimens of mushrooms, toadstools and other organisms plucked by government and private scientists over the past century.

PHILADELPHIA -- They toiled in labs for nearly a century and spent inestimable millions. They tested an arsenal of pesticides, parasites, predators and viruses. But the best brains in bug science couldn't produce the silver bullet that would bring down the gypsy moth.Through it all, the voracious insect chewed its way across the Northeast, stripping vast swaths of forest.Now, faster than you can say "Mother Nature," researchers appear to have found the solution growing right under their noses.

My lawn has a patch of what looks like cigarette ash stuck to the grass blades. What is it, and what can I do about it? This fungus can cause quite a stir when it suddenly appears in spring, summer or fall, but it's harmless, so no control is required. Slime mold uses the grass blades only for support. It grows on microorganisms and organic matter in thatch and moves to grass blades when it's ready to produce fruiting bodies (the spore-producing stage.) These fruiting bodies are sticky and dark when fresh but dry to a dark or light-gray cigarette-like ash that brushes right off. Rainfall, mowing or light raking easily removes it. Slime mold sometimes will show up on liriope, grasslike flowering plants.

My roses are denuding. Some leaves are spotted, some yellow, but they are disappearing fast. Help! The fungal disease called black spot causes 1/16- to 1/2-inch spots on leaves, leaf yellowing, and leaf drop. In severe cases the entire shrub defoliates. Some steps to combat black spot include: •Never using overhead watering methods •Removing all infected leaves from the plant and from the ground •Pruning to open the center of the bush to allow sunlight and air •Mulching underneath to prevent soil from splashing spores back onto the leaves •Keeping rose plants watered when needed to prevent them from becoming stressed Fungicide sprays prevent infection, they can't cure.

My friend offered me extra plants from her yard. She said they are pretty but spread a lot. I'm a little nervous about accepting them. What do you think? Beware pass-along plants when a friend says they are indestructible, spread fast, and outcompete other plants. If you hear "Nothing kills it!" that can be a recipe for disaster. (When the plant is not native, it's a perfect description of an invasive plant.) You don't want to be fighting these plants for years to come. Many plants will spread or reproduce in the landscape when they are happy — and that's great — yet most do not get out of control.

Our cherry tree was oozing sap all over and had dark dead patches on the trunk and branches. The tree service said it had a fungal root rot and we had to cut it down. Can we plant another fruit tree or a vegetable garden when that fungus is in the soil? Will it sicken us? Your tree's disease symptoms match leucostoma canker, also known as cytospora, which is not a soil fungus and doesn't affect humans. Replant with confidence. In the future, take precautions to prevent a stone fruit (cherry, peach, apricot)

My grass has tiny orange raised bumps on the blades. It started about the beginning of fall. It seems worst where there is more shade and the ground stays moist longer. Will it kill the grass? Numerous blades are completely covered. I fertilize a few times a year, using the recommended amount for my bluegrass. Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass are the grasses most susceptible to rust, a fungal disease. Rust disease is favored by low nitrogen fertility, but this is probably not your cause.

White nose syndrome, a fungus deadly to hibernating bats, has been identified in an abandoned mine complex in Washington County. It is the second place in Maryland where hibernating bats have been found to be infected. "Hibernacula surveys are still underway," said Dan Feller, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Affected bats have been found in four of the 10 mines in the Washington County complex, which is considered a single site. "We have adjacent counties in both West Virginia and Pennsylvania that are affected, so we knew we would have additional sites this year," he said.

Maryland farmers are on the lookout for a contagious fungal disease that could devastate future harvests across the state. The disease, called soybean rust, or Asian soybean rust, has been steadily creeping toward Maryland from the Deep South since it was discovered in Louisiana a little more than a year ago. In other parts of the world, including southern Africa and South America, it has reduced soybean yields by as much as 80 percent when left untreated....

A devastating fungus is sweeping the planet, wiping out entire populations of amphibians at such a rate that biologists are helping pull together a huge "Noah's Ark" project to capture frogs, toads and salamanders and put them in safe places. Various factors already have combined to cause more than 120 amphibian species to vanish since 1980, in what one biologist has called "one of the largest extinction spasms for vertebrates in history." A third of the world's nearly 6,000 amphibian species are threatened - their populations weak and susceptible to disease.

Working for a decade, almost entirely out of public view, staffers at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore have made the institution the nation's largest breeder and shipper of the endangered Panamanian golden frog. On Tuesday, 25 of the tiny, yellow-and-black amphibians were packed with wet paper towels in 13 pint-sized deli cups. The cups were set into a comfy nest of crumpled newspapers inside a Styrofoam box labeled "Live Amphibians!" The frogs were then driven to BWI-Marshall Airport for a 10-hour trip to the Fort Worth Zoo, in two hops on Delta Airlines jets.

Biologists have found what they believe is the first evidence that Maryland bats are now infected with white nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has killed more than a million hibernating bats since 2006, devastating colonies from New England to Virginia. A state biologist conducting a bat survey Friday found dead and weakened bats in a cave on private property near Cumberland, the Department of Natural Resources reported Wednesday. About three-quarters of the winged mammals had the telltale white fungus on their muzzles and other exposed skin.