The Missing Mushroom

THE MISSING MUSHROOMS
Deep in the heart of the Westphalian Alps, close to where the borders of Switzerland Austria and Germany meet is the little village of Sondlic.  Architecturally insignificant and boasting very few amenities, this settlement of perhaps 20 houses in all has become the destination for thousands of mycologists or fungi enthusiasts.  For here more than a century ago a small and muddy looking fungus was found and identified for the first time .Few organisms have caused such an uproar in the world of science as the Sondlic Bonderhorn
During the first few years of the 20th century, before the clouds of war descended upon Europe many of the less populated regions were the outdoor laboratory for more forward thinking chemists pharmacologists and doctors and who catalogued, classified, and investigated great numbers of living organisms, much of this work becoming the backbone of the science of today.
This mountainous region with its unique combination of steep mountainsides, sheltered flat meadow- filled valleys; dark foreboding north facing ravines and arid scree slopes, baked by the harsh rays of the midday sun provided a seemingly unending  variation of flora and fauna just waiting to be collected and investigated for new properties that could be utilised in the ever expanding world of the era.
In the 1906 a postgraduate student from Stuttgart University came to this place.  Ernst Bonder was fascinated by all things fungal from the minute yeast that made his beer ferment to the enormous puff balls that grew in the hedgerows around his home. Originally his searches were motivated by the desire to discover new species that would bear his name; in effect fame kudos and snobbery.  Arriving at Sondlic at the end of summer, he took lodgings in the only Gasthof left  open. The season for fashionable mountain walking and climbing holidays was virtually over and as a guest who would provide income for a few more weeks he was made most welcome by the owner and his wife.  His room was modest but comfortable and ideally suited to quiet study after a day in the woods and mountains.  All this fresh air and exercise created an enormous appetite which Claudette, the proprietor’s wife, took great delight in accommodating.  Her dishes were simple but delicious being created mainly from local produce .His particular favourites was a thick soup of finely chopped vegetables with an additional earthy flavour that was hard to identify.  When he asked Claudette what the special ingredient was she just laughed and said it was a recipe handed down to her by her mother and that to reveal the secret would allow others to use it thus removing her edge over the competition.
Ernst Bonder was a thorough and methodical scientist. He would leave the gasthof after a substantial breakfast and upon reaching the area he had selected for his attentions that day would walk slowly along scrutinising any site however small for traces of fungi.  He would turn over stones and logs, crawl into holes in walls, even walking into the cold mountain streams if he thought he might find something of interest on the other side. Whenever he spotted an unusual specimen he would make short but accurratenotes before carefully removing it from its habitat, number it and place it into his custom-built collecting box, which had a series of numbered compartments which allowed him to correlate specimens and written notes. In the early afternoon he would return to his lodging with whatever he had gathered and examine his fungi, classify them if possible and conduct some basic tests with the limited equipment he had been able to bring with him.  If he discovered anything out of the ordinary he would carefully preserve it and dispatch it by post to Stuttgart for further analysis.
About three weeks into his stay, in the early afternoon, just before he headed back to the gasthof, Bonder was scrambling across a patch of sparse grass that struggled to survive among the rocks and scree on a steep slope above the village when he noticed something among the tufts of grass. At first glance it appeared to be some sort of animal or bird droppings.  To this day he doesn’t know what made him give it a second glance but give it a second glance he did and when he picked it up he discovered it was actually a piece of shrivelled fungus.  There was nothing particularly unusual about his appearance just a slight a musty smell that he recognized that couldn’t place. Despite poring over his reference books until the early hours he was unable to identify the specimen. A sense of excitement and anticipation descended upon him. Could this be what he had been seeking for so long? He returned early the following morning and after hunting carefully for 20 minutes he discovered a small cluster of fungi a short distance from where he had come across the desiccated fragment the day before. 
Barely five centimetres in height, these unremarkable fungi had a muddy brown colour and rather than the normal convex shape they were hollow in the middle of the cap rather like the end of a bugle or trumpet.  There was no stalk; rather the gills on the outside ran from ground level to the rim.  Bonder had gathered the fungi with great care damaging the delicate organisms as little as possible.  He even lined his collecting box with grass and covered them with his handkerchief before closing the lid.
As was usual at the beginning of the 20th century, Bonder gathered every single specimen he could find. It did not even occur to him to leave any to mature and set spores to grow into another generation. Conservation was a word of the distant future
Rather than continue his usual routine, he immediately returned to his lodging, packaged up the specimens and including as much information as to the location and environmental conditions as he could and persuaded the proprietor’s son, in exchange for a small fee to hurry as fast as he could with his precious consignment to the nearest railway station before the train to Stuttgart left.
For the next few days the post was eagerly awaited, his excitement mounting for no good reason.  He could not settle to his studies, spending too much time in the local bar drinking schnapps. 
During his studies at university he had read some essays regarding the discovery of vitamins but had largely disregarded them and except in the widest terms considering them unlikely to assist him in achieving his degree and unimportant in the field of mycology.  So he was completely unprepared for the report on his samples when it arrived. The fungi he had submitted contained enormous amounts of vitamin D, probably, the report claimed due to the clear mountain air and southern aspect on which the fungi grew allowing the sun’s rays to penetrate in greater quantity thus assisting the organism to fix this vital substance.
The university laboratory asked for more samples of the fungus to enable it to verify its findings and to carry out further tests.  Bonder scoured the locality for several days managing to find several more locations and dispatched them all as soon as possible. But time was not on his side, winter was creeping down the mountain and before long there was nothing left to find until the following year.
More work was carried out that winter on the second batch of samples. It became clear that this was a remarkable source of vitamin D being in an easily absorbable form for people with disability and the disease of Ricketts, particularly children.
Bonder published a paper outlining his findings and was amazed by the public acclaim he received. He was asked to lecture on his favourite subject and was highly gratified when he was asked to submit a name for this hitherto undiscovered species. This he did, modestly putting the village before his own name, adding a reference to the shape of the fungus. The Sondlic Bunderhorn.
Knowledge of his amazing find spread rapidly through the scientific world, so much so that the following summer large numbers of enthusiastic fungus seekers descended upon Sondlic in the hope of accessing the source of benefit to so many.  The hostelries did a roaring trade with Claudette rushed off her feet to try to feed these many hungry mouths. By autumn, the hitherto modest quantities of the fungus found dwindled to nothing and the following year they failed to appear at all. Within four years this great boon to mankind had totally disappeared and with it all hopes of fame and fortune for Bonder. There were even rumours that the entire episode was a hoax and that Bonder had dreamed the whole thing up to “Get rich quick”
Totally disillusioned, he decided that emigration was the only way he would be able to advance his career and to that end accepted a teaching post at a minor university in America.  A few days before his departure he returned to Sondlic for a final time to bid farewell to all of the friends and acquaintances he had made over the last five years.  That evening ordering his final supper in the gasthof where he had stayed so many times before he asked Claudette for his favourite soup only to be told it was no longer available. When he asked why she told him that the secret ingredient could no longer be found.
No longer able to contain his curiosity, Bonder asked” Claudette, tomorrow Ieave here, probably for the last time and as you can’t find your special ingredient any more what harm will it do to tell me your secret”.  She replied with a sigh, “Very well, but the knowledge won’t make you very happy. The special addition to my soup was the very same mushroom that you found and now it is gone.  I did not know this until it was too late. You and your colleagues have eaten your own success. All that is left is the name. The Sondlic Bonderhorn.