|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
Go DeeperThe Nature Conservancy in Oregon |
Jonathan Frank, a biologist at Southern Oregon University, has spent a lot of time in the past five years wandering through the state’s forests searching for truffles. “I wish we had a pig, or a good dog, but it’s mostly me out there on my hands and knees,” he says. “We’ll be very happy if we come back with five or six truffles in one day. It’s mostly fruitless searching.”
But Frank hit pay dirt recently while scratching his way around The Nature Conservancy’s Whetstone Savanna Preserve in Oregon, digging up what turned out to be three new species of truffles. In honor of the discovery, he named one after the preserve: Tuber whetstonense.
Frank isn’t too worried about a rush of truffle hunters racing to dig up his new finds. “I brought them into the lab, served them with olive oil and French bread,” he says. “And they were unanimously considered to be remarkably bland.”
—Curtis Runyan
Nature picture credits: Photo © Jonathan Frank (Truffles)
