“Some of their enzyme are used to produce that stone-washed jeans look,” said Seanna Annis, who studies plant fungi at the University of Maine. “Soy sauce has actually got a fungus involved in fermenting the soy beans; that’s what actually helps to give it that flavor.”

One man, one life of fungi
From the ‘Destroying Angel’ to the kinda creepy gyromitra gigas: Maine’s largest fungi collection.

Amanita virosa looks harmless enough in its little cardboard box, all white and wizened with age. But one bite can kill a full grown man. It’s nicknamed the Destroying Angel. It was one of Dick Homola’s favorites.

“He really liked Amanitas, you’ll see there’s tons of Amanitas in here,” said Seanna Annis, opening box after box of dried-out mushrooms and their fungus cousins in the basement of Hannibal Hamlin hall at the University of Maine.

Eight years ago, Homola, a longtime professor, died and left behind the state’s largest collection of fungi.

Throughout his career, Homola walked all over the woods in Maine and other New England states with his eyes peeled, looking for fungi, and kept detailed journals. He dug up his first sample in July 1973. He dug up the last – no. 10,771 – in August 1998.

“I think he just really found them a fascinating group. They’re a very complicated group because they change colors and sizes and shapes. The fact, too, that they only show up for a really short period of time…

“You have to collect them when they’re really fresh and in good shape to really be able to identify them well,” Annis said. “I can understand. They’re beautiful. Fungi are just gorgeous.”

Annis, a mycology professor and curator of Homola’s pieces, is a fan of the weird-looking ones. (Mycology is the study of fungi.)

She pulled out a big, brown gyromitra gigas, shriveled like a brain, and marveled, “Now isn’t that great?”

“Look at that, it’s like an alien being,” she said.

For 25 years, Homola collected mushroom-related fungi to study the subtle difference in caps, stems and gills and find out how different samples were related. He archived approximately 30,000 photos of each fungus at its colorful peek and discovered a couple new species along the way.

He was working on a big book on mushroom identification when he died.

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t far enough along,” Annis said. “There’s a whole pile he didn’t get a chance to stick into his collection before he died. Unfortunately, I don’t even know half the names of some of these things.”

Homola used to lead walks of amateur fungi fans and field lots of calls from the poison control center. He was a go-to “My child just ate this, is he going to get sick?” guy.

His collection still helps other researchers. It’s tucked away in eight large cabinets, behind a door marked University of Maine Herbarium: Fungi, where bugs and unwanted fungus can’t intrude.