More Chinese characters in nature

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Chips Mackinolty sent in this intriguing photograph from Peter Cooke Darwin's tumblr, Life Is A Carnivore:

Peter suspects that the fungi pictured above are:

…Calostoma fuhreri which shares the black body with red coloured orifice which to my eye resembles Chinese characters. The name Calostoma means beautiful mouth.

If these little beauties ever get an English name, I hope that it won't be "Chinese character", like a certain moth that we studied recently:  "Moth onomastics: Chinese Character (Cilix glaucata) " (1/25/15). I'd much rather go with "pretty mouth" (but not "hot lips").



7 Comments

  1. Keith said,

    February 9, 2015 @ 12:39 pm

    How about 'Hanzi smatter mushroom'?

  2. Sjiveru said,

    February 9, 2015 @ 12:39 pm

    I thought it was going to be a comment on how the picture looked like 斗 :P

  3. EricF said,

    February 9, 2015 @ 3:26 pm

    The lower left one looks just like my tattoo, which means "honorable man with large penis."

  4. The Tumbleweed Farm said,

    February 9, 2015 @ 4:06 pm

    Well, we've got 大 and 夫 here (bottom right), and maybe something that looks a bit like 关…

  5. Jonathan Badger said,

    February 9, 2015 @ 5:26 pm

    The idea reminds me of an article maybe twenty years ago in the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research", in which the shapes that the nematode worm C. elegans (used in genetics research) formed were interpreted as being Egyptian hieroglyphs and "interpreted" as messages the worms were trying to convey.

  6. CLThornett said,

    February 10, 2015 @ 3:38 am

    And it reminds me of Ursula LeGuin's short story, "The author of 'Acacia Seeds'". What is the last message of the worker ant?

  7. Chad Nilep said,

    February 18, 2015 @ 1:17 am

    Like The Tumbleweed Farm, if I squint I can see:


      羊 大

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