Dank and Dark Earth

If you're in the market for unheimlich horrors out of Erckmann-Chatrian or William Hope Hodgson, you could do worse than to have a look at the Cornell Mushroom Blog. I especially like its use of zoomable, rotating Quicktime images in posts like Cabbage Monstrosities and A Spider's Nightmare.

There are also some remarkable time-lapse movies, as well as recipes for such "strange new adoptions of listless gluttony" as puffball fritters and chicken of the woods, which will please those who, in Piero Camporesi's words, "prefer to seek nourishment from gelid, inert, corpse-like organisms...fed on darkness, night-time dews, opaque saps."

Cornell photographer Kent Loeffler has many more photos and films at his site - including the cautionary fable Potato infected with Erwinia carotovera - and explains the tricks of his trade in considerable detail.