Wind energy comes from the sun. Counterintuitive but nonetheless true. The transfer of energy from the sun to the earth is fundamental physics, giving rise to weather in the short term and climate when averaged over decades. The sun’s energy in the form of radiant solar heating increases the temperature of the land surface of the earth by transferring electromagnetic energy to individual molecules, causing them to vibrate. Temperature is the empirical measure of the movement caused by the kinetic energy vibration of molecules. More vibration, higher temperature. Sun radiation similarly warms the ocean but mixing water current mitigates the surface heating effect. The heated land surface warms  the air immediately above it. Warmer air is less dense since the mostly nitrogen and oxygen molecules move farther apart due to the movement of vibration. The less dense, warmer air rises to create an area of lower pressure in the heated area relative to surrounding air masses. Similarly, cold air falls to create areas of higher pressure. The energy of the sun generates low and high pressure areas.

Temperature differences give rise to pressure differences. Wind occurs when air from an area of high pressure moves to an area of low pressure. On a global scale, the equatorial tropic regions are heated by the sun’s rays causing the air to rise and move toward the colder north and south poles. The tilt of the earth on its axis of rotation concentrates heating in the area between the Tropic of Cancer marking midsummer noon in northern latitudes and the Tropic of Capricorn where it is then midwinter. The rotation of the earth causes the global wind movement from equator to pole to shift in the direction of rotation. This gives rise to counterclockwise rotation in the northern hemisphere and clockwise rotation down under which is called the Coriolis effect. [1] The relatively simple flow of wind curling away from the tropics is complicated regionally by ocean thermal effects and land height differentials. The resultant winds can range from the doldrums of the Horse Latitudes to the fury of a cyclone. Capturing the sun’s wind energy can be a daunting proposition.

The use of wind by humans extends to the dawn of the historical record. Rock carvings of boats with sails have been found in the Nile Vallery at a site named Wadi Hammamat dating from about 3300 BCE, the pre-dynastic period before the union of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt. Corroborating evidence in the form of Egyptian vases depicts reed-hulled ships with a single mast holding a square sail probably made from either papyrus or cotton which were likely limited to excursions along and across the Nile.  The Phoenicians, the sea-faring people of antiquity, ranged throughout the Mediterranean region and possibly passed through the Strait of Gibraltar to reach the British Isles. A rough hewn terra cotta ship model from about 1500 BCE found near Byblos on the Lebanese coast provides archaeological evidence. Supplemented with oar-wielding human crews,  the sail-powered galleys of the Greeks vanquished the  Persian fleet  at Salamis in 480 BCE and the long boats of the Vikings began their centuries long raids along the coastlines of Europe at Lindisfarne in Northumbria in 793 CE. [2] The sailing ship bereft of oars became the agent of change during the Age of Discovery that began with Columbus and literally established a New World order.

Wind power was the driving force for merchant ships seeking global trade in spices and silks and for warships seeking global dominance with cannons for centuries.  The language and units of wind are thus rooted in nautical applications. The knot or nautical mile per hour for wind speed is a good example. Ships navigate without landmarks in the open ocean, their horizons uniform in all directions. Starting from home port as a known datum, ships proceeded by dead reckoning, a means of determining current position by using only course and speed. The magnetic compass provided a reasonably reliable course but the speed was as variable as the wind. The mile predates the kilometer by centuries, having been introduced by the Romans as the distance travelled by its legions in 1,000 double steps (mille in Latin) or about 5,000 feet, which was standardized by Queen Elizabeth I to 5,280 feet, exactly eight furlongs. The nautical mile has a different provenance as one sixtieth of one degree of arc of earth’s circumference at the equator which works our to 6,080 feet. Since degrees of latitude and longitude along the surface of the earth define geographical position, the nautical mile providing increments of degree change is the best measure. An ingenious method was devised to determine ship speed in nautical miles per hour. A weighted sea anchor called a drogue attached to a rope was dropped over the gunwale (ship’s sides above the deck used for gun support). The rope had knots every 47 feet 3 inches which were counted as they played out for a period of 28 seconds (measured by sand glass) as the ship moved away from the stationary drogue. Every knot counted meant that 47.25 feet had been traveled in 28 seconds, which equates to nautical miles per hour. Since ship’s speed was knots, the wind that created it was given the same units. [3]

The age of sailing ships ended with the advent of steam boats powered mostly by coal, the first of fossil fuels. Before Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine later improved by James Watt as a practical alternative power source, the only way to do work was with humans or animals, and, much later, flowing water or blowing wind. Manpower, now implausibly mangled as person-power, was paramount, and aggressive dynasties throughout the Old World cast about for humans as slaves to carry out the chores of manufacture. The word slave derives from the capture of Slavs from the southern steppes of Europe by the Tatars, who raided up and down the Dnieper and Don River basins to satisfy the demands of their Ottoman employers whose religion forbade the enslavement of Muslims. The Cossacks originated as a roving band of nomads that fought against the Tatarian slave trade. [4] The heavy stones of the pyramids of Egypt and Mesoamerica were cut, hauled, and hoisted by humans. The Africans kidnapped from their homeland and sold to colonists of the New World perpetuated forced slave labor into the nineteenth century.  Animal power came later.

Dogs were first domesticated from wolves about 10,000 years ago primarily as human hunting companions. Sheep, goats, and pigs followed over the next two thousand years as ready sources of animal protein to augment and eventually replace unreliable hunting for elusive prey. But it was the domestication of the cow/ox from the aurochs 6,000 years ago and the horse two millennia later that transformed human endeavor by incorporating beasts of burden. It has been argued that the prevalence of large domesticable herbivorous mammals in Eurasia (13 out of a total of 14 with only the llama as an American outlier) led to the historical dominance of this area in world history. [5] Workhorse became an idiom for any durable and dependable device as testimony to the centrality of equine employment for everything from chariots to plows. Watt invented the term horsepower to provide understandable equality to his steam engines to convince skeptical buyers of their efficacy. Both units of power are now in use, one mostly for cars and the other for lightbulbs (1 horsepower = 745.7 watts) … and wind turbines.  

The first wind machine was the windmill. Now a synonym for rotating, the term windmill originated as a compound word to describe the process of using wind to mill grain. As agriculture supplanted foraging in the Neolithic (New Stone) Age,  populations grew as more food became available on a regular, seasonal basis. The need to supply more grain to meet  burgeoning demand drove innovation. The small, hand operated grindstone that sufficed for the individual hearth grew in size and weight to the millstone of mass production. The role of grain mill operator, or millwright, evolved as innovators employed first human and eventually animal strength to operate centralized flour processing facilities. Windmills first appear in the historical record in 644 CE operating in the region now called Sistan or Sakastan in eastern Iran near the Afghanistan border noted for persistent strong winds and lack of flowing water. The Asbads (Persian for windmill) of Sistan, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, consisted of a vertical axis directly connected to a pair of millstones at the bottom with wind-catching sails mounted horizontally in a stone structure configured with entrance and exit wind portals. [6] The use of vertical axis mills persisted into the 13^th century and spread eastward to China and westward to the Crimean Peninsula that extends into the Black Sea.  

The first European windmills repurposed the Persian asbad with the use of the gearing that had been developed independently for the waterwheels of the Roman Empire. The result was the iconic post mill with two to four elongated sails made from canvas ship sailcloth stretched over a wooden frame and held vertically in the direct path of wind by a wooden post. The wind-rotated sails turned a horizonal axle which was connected to the grinding millstones with a 90-degree bevel gear. Post-type windmills first appeared in France in 1180 and were introduced to England a decade later, evolving over the next century to a tower windmill that included a movable roof that could be turned on a track to adjust to changes in wind direction. The windmill as water pump was developed in the Netherlands in the 15^th century to drain low lying areas for plantation.  With the mill stone replaced by a bucket wheel, water was elevated by over six feet and deposited in purpose built drainage ditches. The windmill gained symbolic distinction as the epitome of Holland, complementing the tulips that were planted in the now arable land and the wooden sabots worn by peasants to traverse boggy fields. By the 19^th century, the windmill as generic  power source contradicted its grain grinding etymology. In addition to water pumping, windmills were used to saw wood, polish stone, grind paint, press seed oil, make paper, and a variety of other mechanized processes including the traditional grain milling. The Zaan region just north of Amsterdam had more than 900 windmills in the 19th century. [7]

The first wind machine exclusively for power generation was constructed in Cleveland, Ohio by the electrical pioneer Charles F. Brush. After designing and patenting a dynamo for generating electricity for arc lights in 1876, he formed the Brush Electrical Company which sold arc lighting systems across the United States from San Francisco to New York, providing the first lights on Broadway. After selling his company to what was to become General Electric he retired to his mansion on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, devoting himself to research and invention. In 1888, he designed and built a massive wind turbine with a 56 foot diameter rotor with 144 cedar blades to provide power to charge 12 direct current (DC) batteries to power 350 light bulbs in the  mansion. An 1890 article noted that “The reader should not think that electric light from energy obtained in this way is cheap because the wind is free … However, there is great satisfaction in making use of one of nature’s most unruly forces of motion.” [8] Perhaps that was Brush’s motivation. At about the same time, the Danish inventor and physicist Poul la Coul took a different tack, using a small number of rapidly turning blades to generate electricity at the Askov Folk High School, where he taught classes on wind electricity and founded the Society of Wind Electricians. His rather surprising choice for energy storage was hydrogen produced by the electrolysis of water which was used directly for gas lights in the school. Explosions caused by oxygen contamination blew out the windows on several occasions. In 1957, Johannes Juul, one of la Coul’s students, pioneered the first wind turbines to generate alternating current  (AC) electricity using the now standard three blade wind turbine. [9]  

The latter half of the 20^th century was dominated by cheap fossil fuels for conventional power plants and, for a time, the promise of nuclear energy. The Arab oil embargo imposed in reaction to the 1973 Yom Kippur War sent shock waves throughout the industrialized world, eliciting a reassessment of dependence on foreign oil. The resultant impetus for alternative power generation sources led to a renaissance in wind energy research and development. The wind-wise and wind-resourced Danes took matters into their own hands. In 1975, a group of teachers from three schools that shared a large campus on the former Tvind farm in Western Denmark near Ulfborg placed an ad in a major paper “seeking windmill builders.”  The resultant Windmill Team, comprised of an eclectic group of 400 idealists with no prior experience and an average age of twenty-one, set out to build the world’s first megawatt (MW) wind turbine from scratch with funding provided by the teachers. Three years later, the Tvindkraft, with three pitched rotating blades made from fiberglass and a computer-controlled frequency converter to account for variable speed, rose above the Jutland plain. At a height of over 150 feet and a power capacity of 2 MW, the first modern wind turbine was the largest in the world for several decades. It is still in operation, providing electrical power to the three schools and the co-located Tvind Climate Center. Denmark subsequently became the world leader in wind energy, as copies of the design were built throughout the country. The Windmill Team sought no patents in order to promote the shift to wind power and away from fossil fuels, an act of notable altruism. [10]

In the United States, federal level wind turbine research and development sparked by the oil embargo followed the more traditional pathway of public funding to private companies. The Department of Energy (DOE) established the NASA Lewis Research Center in 1973 to oversee demonstration projects selected from proposals submitted. The NASA/DOE MOD-0 was a Lockheed design erected in 1975 in Ohio with two blades producing 100KW atop a 100-foot tower. Designs progressed over the years to MOD-5B, a Boeing installation on the Hawaiian island of Oahu in 1987 producing 3.2 MW on a 200-foot tower. None of these designs were ever commercialized and the prototypes were all eventually shut down and dismantled. [11] At the state level, rising oil prices coupled with nascent environmental concerns provoked the California Energy Commission to establish the Altamont Pass Wind Resource area in 1980. With favorable tax incentives, conditional use permits were awarded to commercial interests to build wind farms in Alameda and Contra Costa counties just east of San Francisco. This resulted in the world’s first modern large scale wind farm. With an average wind turbine power of only 94 KW, these relatively small turbines were combined in groups of up to 400 to generate city size megawatts of power.[12] Although interest waned when oil prices dropped in the mid 1980s, the Altamont Pass project was never abandoned and served as the nexus for increasing California wind energy capacity to address the rising temperatures of global warming.

The United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to provide “an assessment of the understanding of all aspects of climate change, including how human activities can cause such changes and can be impacted by them.” The panel consists of an international team of recognized experts in the interrelated scientific fields that play a role in climatology. The First Assessment Report was issued in 1990 after having reviewed the preceding decades of research with two broad findings: (1) The greenhouse effect is a natural feature of the planet and its fundamental physics is well understood; and (2) The atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases were increasing largely due to human activities. [13] After almost three centuries, the cost of the fossil-fueled Industrial Revolution had become clear. The environmental free lunch was over. By the turn of the century, wind energy was back on the table and resources poured into the design and construction of ever larger and more efficient turbines to be placed in dense clusters wherever the winds blew best. And because of wind variability, its use as a controllable force for reliable and consistent electricity posed an engineering challenge.

That wind force can pack a punch is evident in coastal communities hammered by hurricanes and in trailer parks torn apart by tornadoes. Wind derives power from the force it exerts on any surface that is in the path of its movement to equalize pressure. The basic wind power (P) equation is fairly simple:

                                                          P = ½ρAv³   

where ρ is air density, A is turbine area, and v is wind speed. Since the density of air is relatively uniform at 1.25 kg/m³, the only way to increase the power of a wind turbine is to make it bigger or to locate it in a windy area. Wind speed is the most important factor due to the cubic function, which means that if you double the wind speed, power goes up by a factor of eight (2x2x2=8). Area is the circle swept by the rotating blades that define its radius r, the familiar A = πr². It is convenient to use metric units to produce power in watts. For example, a wind turbine with 10-meter blades (an area of 320 square meters) rotating in wind at 10 meters per second (1000 when cubed) would result in a theoretical maximum power of  (0.5)(1.25)(320)(1000) = 200,000 watts or 200 kilowatts (KW). Note that 1 meter per second is about 2 knots, the nautical wind speed unit. A kilowatt is approximately the amount of power required for a mid-sized single-family home. The megawatt (MW) is more useful for the energy needs of a city. Terawatt is global.

In the real world, there are both physical and practical limits on the calculated power of a wind turbine that together reduce the usable power by about half. The physical limitation is based on the fact that if all of the wind passing through a turbine generated power, then the wind would have no more energy. In other words, the wind would stop blowing. Since the wind does not stop, it stands to reason that only a portion of its energy can be extracted. The limit imposed by the physics of fluid flow is known as the Betz Limit for the German physicist Albert Betz who first proposed it. The Betz Limit is 59 percent. Therefore, the maximum power that could be generated from the 200 KW wind turbine would be 120 KW. This maximum would only be achieved when the wind maintained an average speed of 20 knots or 10 miles per second and if the blades were effective over the entire area A. That this is not the case is reflected in the use of  Cp,  the power coefficient or the performance coefficient. Cp varies according to the pitch angle of the blades, which are adjustable on all modern wind turbines, and on the rotational speed at the tip of the blades relative to the upstream wind speed, which varies according to blade length. A maximum Cp of 45 percent is the result of a tip speed that is 7 times faster than wind speed with a 0 degree pitch angle. [14]. Finally, it is necessary to account for wind variability over time in a given geographic area. The term capacity factor (CF) is used to adjust the wind energy that can be extracted relative to the nameplate or nominal KW or MW capability of the wind turbine. An economically viable wind turbine requires a CF of about 30 with a maximum in near perfect conditions approaching 45. [15] The bottom line is that it takes a lot of wind turbines to capture enough wind energy to power a city. Hence the wind farm.

Wind installations are divided into two broad categories according to placement: onshore and offshore. Onshore wind turbines are cheaper to build and maintain, but are limited by the lower average wind speeds over land and by human nuisance factors like noise and landscape aesthetics. Offshore wind turbines take advantage of the more consistent winds over water but can only be sited in countries with suitable littoral areas with adequate capital to finance the higher construction costs. Because many of the industrialized nations of the world abut the oceans and have limited land area available, offshore wind is sometimes the better option. Growth statistics since 2005 have been impressive. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, offshore wind grew by 21 percent annually over the last ten years, bringing the total installed offshore wind power to 64.3 GW. While the United States has only 42 MW of offshore wind installed, the Inflation Reduction Act incentivized offshore wind installations with about 50 GW of added capacity now in early planning phases.  However, onshore wind is still by far the most prevalent, comprising over 90 percent of global installed wind power. [16]

Onshore wind towers followed the historical pattern of windmills of past centuries that were installed locally where needed and feasible. The benefits that accrued to populations in areas hosting them offset most pushback complaints about land use and landscape clutter. In Holland they are and were the hallmark of Dutch industry. The only technical constraint for onshore wind is adequate wind. In general, this restricts installations to rows along mountain ridges and in phalanxes on windswept plains arranged to prevent wake interference. Financial constraints depend on the cost of electricity offsetting capital intensive construction. Political constraints are largely dependent on the local perception of climate change and on financial incentives for community services and local landowners. Onshore wind partnered with solar photovoltaics comprise the lion’s share of renewable energy that has burgeoned over the last decade. 440 GW of renewable energy, enough electricity for Germany and Spain, was added in 2023, 107 GW more  than that added in any previous year. The total amount of renewable power globally by the end of 2024 is expected to reach 4,500 GW (4.5 TW), the amount of electricity consumed annually by the United States and China. [17] These rosy projections are certainly good news as testimony to the oft-stated goal of carbon neutrality by mid-century. However, it is not likely that  continued growth at this pace will be sustainable.   

World population has increased exponentially for centuries. Exponential means that it follows the progression 1-2-4-8-16 ad infinitum, doubling every generation if the exponent is two.  The supporting world market economy has expanded in proportion to the number of people it serves as substantiated by annual percentage increases in GNP. However, all growth is limited by inherent constraints. Globally, the earth and its resources are finite and there will eventually be a population maximum (estimated at 10 billion in 2050). Technologies like wind energy are also constrained by both physical and geographic limits. Wind turbine power went from a few kilowatts in the 19^th century to 100 KW one hundred years later. The climate change impetus to improve wind turbine performance resulted in taller towers, longer blades, better generators, and lighter materials produced a tenfold increase to the megawatt range by the end of the 20^th century. The largest wind turbines now being built are in the 5MW range. There will be no gigawatt wind turbines. The reason is that there are constraints on the maximum power that wind turbines can produce due to height, weight, and the physics of both wind and electricity. The resultant S-shaped curve accounts for these systematic shortfalls over time. It is a calculated or logistic result unlike the mathematical exponential. It called logistic growth. [18]  

Growth can be exponential only in the beginning when “low hanging fruit” is harvested. This hackneyed engineering axiom refers to things that are easy to change since they are within arms reach (low off the ground) and are fully developed (ripe fruit). An example would be changing from steel to aluminum to reduce weight to build a taller tower.  Improvements become harder over time until the carrying capacity is reached. This phenomenon is called “decreasing returns to scale,”  characterized by an inflection or turning point where exponential growth transforms to an asymptotic approach the maximum sustainable size (or power). Though the terms are not synonymous, the logistic S shape is the result of logistics.  Logistics is defined as managing the details of an undertaking. The aphorism “an army marches on its stomach” refers to the need to have food supplied to it by a logistics chain that is frequently called the supply line. An unfed army cannot continue to march.  This phrase is attributed to Napoleon, who ironically lost most of his Grande Armée on the plains of Russia due to not following his own logistical dictum. The design, manufacture and deployment of complex technologies like wind turbines requires a steady logistical stream of materials to build them and industrial engineers to install them. From the megawatt powering standpoint, it may be concluded that wind turbines are at or near their logistical megawatt limit due to logistics factors.

Wind turbines are equally, and perhaps more dramatically, limited by geographic and social constraints. Sites with the highest average winds and most favorable demographics were filled with the initial round of wind towers now in operation and generating “current” electrical statistics. The original investors were rewarded with sustainable profit margins necessary for a market economy. Expansion to less desirable sites with less wind will change the equation. At some point, revenue from the sale of electricity is no longer sufficient to  finance the capital investment needed to build the wind turbine in the first place. At the same time, higher wind turbine manufacture and installation costs accrue due to the  increase in demand for critical materials with a limited supply. Supply/demand mismatch is a harbinger of inflation, the gradual rise of all costs. Financial strain is starting to occur in 2023. Orsted, the largest energy company in Denmark and world leader in wind energy, cancelled two major wind projects off the coast of New Jersey called Ocean Wind that would have produced 2.2 GW. According to one of the Orsted executives “macroeconomic factors have changed dramatically over a short period of time, with high inflation, rising interest rates, and supply chain bottlenecks impacting our long term capital investments.” This decision was further justified based on local opposition.  Residents of New Jersy’s coastal Cape May filed a lawsuit to block a tax break for the wind farm claiming that “offshore wind development could threaten fisheries and marine mammals.” [19]  With short sightedness approaching myopia, the shoreline loss that the rising sea levels of global warming will ultimately induce, no doubt to the benefit of both fish and whales and the detriment of future generations, was not mentioned.  

Onshore wind projects have technical and social challenges that are in many cases even more trenchant than the nearly out of sight offshore projects. Land-based wind machines straddle ridgelines and dot wind swept plains in remote places―far from the industries and populations they serve. Transmission and connectivity is a serious problem in continent-sized countries like the United States and Australia. A good example is the plight of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) that manages the electricity grid across the Great Plains from the Dakotas to the Rio Grande through over 60,000 miles of transmission lines. New wind and solar generation sites seeking to hook up to the grid must wait in what is called the “interconnection queue” until a computer simulation can be run to ensure that the grid remains stable and effective. A wind energy firm in Virginia named Apex drew up plans to install 135 wind turbines in New Mexico generating 300 MW of power in 2013 and applied for connection to SPP in 2017. By the time SPP got around to running the simulation in 2022, there were dozens of projects totaling over 10 GW. The model showed that a new 100 mile long high voltage power transmission line would be necessary to accommodate the disruption at a cost of over $1B that would need to be paid by the projects seeking grid admission. With a bill of over $250M, the Apex project was no longer financially viable and was cancelled. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that requires the simulation testing is working to ameliorate the situation, but the inherent variability of wind and solar power on an otherwise continuous  and necessarily stable power grid must be taken into account lest blackouts prevail.  [20]

The 26^th United Nations Conference of Parties or COP26 held in London in November of 2021 established a global benchmark of reducing net carbon emissions by 50 percent in 2030. The lion’s share of the emissions (69%-89% depending on the model) are from power generation and transportation. In order to meet the 2030  COP goals, the power sector will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 50%. Meeting this threshold will require the elimination of all coal power plants and the increase in solar and wind power by about five times the growth levels of the last decade―nothing less than exponential will do. Similarly, the transportation sector will require an increase in electrical vehicles (EVs) from 4% in 2021 to an average of 67% in 2030, placing even more strain on the grid. A continuation of current US public policy will produce only 6% to 28%  of net carbon emission reduction by 2030. [21] It is not unreasonable to suggest that the goal cannot be reached using only wind and solar power which must be used when generated or stored in nonexistent long term energy storage repositories (like batteries). A stable source of electricity is needed to sustain the grid. Fusion will never be ready in time. “Politicians need to tell voters that their desires for an energy transition that eschews both fossil fuels and nuclear power is a dangerous illusion.” [22] The fate of Earth as human habitat is at stake.

References:   

1. Fovell, R. Professor of Atmospheric Science, UCLA, Meteorology: An Introduction to the Wonders of the Weather. The Teaching Company, 2010.  

2. Capper, D. Commander, Royal Navy “Sails and Sailing Ships” Encyclopedia Brittanica Macropedia, William Benton, Chicago. 1972, Volume 16, pp 157-163

3. Whitelaw, I, A Measure of All Things, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2007, pp 30, 101.

4. Plokhy, S. The Gates of Europe, A History of Ukraine, Revised Edition, Basic Books, New York, 2021, pp 74-76.

5. Diamond, J. Guns, Germs, and Steel, W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 1997, pp 157-175, 355.

6. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6192  

7. Wailes, R, “Windmills” Encyclopedia Brittanica Macropedia, William Benton, Chicago. 1972, Volume 19, pp 861-862.

8. “Mr. Brush’s Windmill Dynamo”, Scientific American, New York Volume 63 Number 26, December 20, 1890.

9. The History of Modern Wind Power (Danish with English translation)    http://xn--drmstrre-64ad.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower%20web/da/pictures/index.htm

10. https://www.tvindkraft.dk/stories/wind-and-the-environmental-crisis-windmill-denmark/#

11.  https://www.windsofchange.dk/WOC-usastat.php

12. Wind Turbine Projects – Current Development Projects – Policies & Plans Under Consideration – Planning – Community Development Agency – Alameda County (acgov.org)

13. Climate Change 2001 Synthesis Report, Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 2001.

14.  Aliprantis, D. Fundamentals of Wind Energy Conversion for Electrical Engineers,  Purdue University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2014   https://engineering.purdue.edu/~dionysis/EE452/Lab9/Wind_Energy_Conversion.pdf  

15. Kalmikov, A. Wind Power Fundamentals, Department of Earth, Planetary, and Atmospheric Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2013. http://web.mit.edu/wepa/WindPowerFundamentals.A.Kalmikov.2017.pdf

16. Global Wind Energy Council, Global Offshore Wind Report 2023 https://gwec.net/global-wind-report-2022/

17. International Energy Agency (IEA) Renewable Energy Market Update Outlook for 2023 and 2014.   https://www.iea.org/energy-system/renewables/wind

18. Smil, V. Growth, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2019, pp 20-21, 181-184.

19. Puko, T. “Demise of N.J. wind projects imperils Biden’s offshore agenda” The Washington Post,  2 November 2023.

20. Charles, D. “Off the Grid” Science, Volume 32, Issue 6662, 8 September 2023 pp 1042-1045

21. Bistline, J. et al “Actions for reducing US emissions at least 50% by 2030” Science, Volume 376, Issue 6596, 27 May 2022, pp 922

22. “Power Struggle” The Economist Jume 25-July 1, 2022. P 11. 

Common Name: Opossum, Opossum, Possum, Common opossum, Virginia opossum – The name is of Native American provenance and is from the Algonquian word apasum, which translates as “white animal.” The coarse fur ranges from white in the northern reaches of its range to almost black in warmer regions.

Scientific Name:  Didelphis virginiana – The generic name is from the Greek di meaning “two” and delphys meaning “womb.”  The opossum is a marsupial with a pouch that is used to nurture the young after gestation; it is metaphorically a “second womb.” An alternative etymology for the genus is the fact that the female opossum has two uteruses. The species name refers to its original identification and description in the colony of Virginia by European naturalists defining the taxonomy of North American fauna.

Potpourri: Opossums are the only marsupial mammals in North America; there are none in Eurasia.  They are in a sense living fossils, transitional forms that link the more primitive egg-laying monotreme mammals to those with a placenta. The global geographic dispersion of marsupials is a biological affirmation of continental drift and its plate tectonic motive force. They predominate in the Australian archipelago with their monotreme brethren and are well established in South America. Opossums arrived in North America as relatively new immigrants across the Panamanian isthmus when the two continents became conjoined about 2.8 million years ago; only yesterday in geological time. That they thrived amid the dominant placental mammals is testimony to their resilience and adaptation. This is especially noteworthy considering that they lack any form of plates or spines to protect their scrawny bodies and possess neither fangs nor claws to repel an attacker. Their most effective defense is to feign death, giving rise to the idiom “playing possum.”

Evolution rarely if ever proceeds in a straight line―it is a record of the past but not a plan for the future.  Random mutations yield periodic variations on the original theme; only a precious few result in an intelligent design that endures. Nature is the judge and every other living thing is the jury as newness strives for an unoccupied niche. The original mammal combined three key attributes that together resulted in permutation and dominance: warm blood; milk glands; and body hair. The last common ancestor of mammals and reptiles lolled about in muddy wetlands about 300 million years ago. It took 100 million years to make a mammal and another 20 million years to make a monotreme, the most primitive of extant mammals. Monotreme means ‘one-hole’ as they have a single cloaca, the external passage for intestinal, reproductive and urinary purposes, a trait shared with birds and reptiles. Cloaca means ‘sewer’ in Latin. The scant fossil record indicates that there was a proto-monotreme named Australosphenida that spread out over the continents that originally formed Gondwana, the southern portion of Pangaea. [1]

Only five monotreme species survived the scourge of extinctions caused by competitors, environmental changes, and cataclysms.  The inimitable duck-billed platypus and four echidnas or spiny anteaters are the only surviving representatives. These animals stymied taxonomists for more than a century due to uncertainty about lactation and reproduction.  They lack prominent nipples and they produce offspring infrequently and in seclusion. When the first platypus was sent to England in 1799, it was thought to be a hoax due to the improbable combination of a bird-like beak, the four feet of a quadruped, and a fishy aquatic habitat. The lactation issue was resolved by a British Army Lieutenant in New South Wales named Maule who skinned his pet female platypus after she was accidentally killed and noted milk emanating directly from her abdomen.  When this report reached London, the testimonial of an army officer was considered unimpeachable and the platypus was declared mammalian in 1831. The reproductive question was not resolved until 1884 when a British zoologist named Caldwell had killed over 1400 monotremes to try to solve the riddle of reproduction. His brutal quest ended when he came across a female in the process of laying eggs. [2] The monotreme was confirmed as mammalian.

The importance of monotremes was noted by Darwin during his brief sojourn in Australia in 1836 during the seminal circumnavigation of HMS Beagle: “I had the good fortune to see several of the famous Platypus or Ornithorhyncus paradoxicus; certainly, it is a most extraordinary animal … A little time before this, I had been lying on a sunny bank and was reflecting on the strange character of the animals of this country as compared to the rest of the world.” [3] Some years later, he wrote “We here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down on a tree, and which by some chance has been favored and is still alive on its summit.” [4] The platypus was pivotal to Darwin’s tree branch conceptualization of evolution. He was, in fact, consistent in his perspicacity throughout, as the dearth of fossils indicate that monotremes are, indeed, a straggling branch.  They are the egg-laying mammals that evolved from the reptiles as lactating nurturers, setting the stage for the successor marsupials, the pouched mammals; marsupium is Latin for pocket.

Marsupial mammals are considerably more common than monotremes with about 330 species almost exclusively in Australia which has four orders and South America which has three.  These groupings are sometimes referred to as Australidelphia and Ameridelphia. Marsupials are phylogenic with placental mammals in having a single common ancestor after the branching of monotremes. To emphasize these relationships, the older monotremes are designated Prototheria, the more recent mammals Theria, marsupials are Metatheria, and placentals are Eutheria. The range and diversity of marsupial mammals offers one of the most compelling arguments for the veracity of Darwin’s epiphany about the origin of speciation. Evolution is only a theory according to scientific rules that require experimental validation and the clock cannot be set backward to precursors nor can it be sped up from geologic to human time to prove it. A great many marsupials independently adapted over time to have the same body forms as placentals, a phenomenon called coevolution. The Tasmanian Devil is a  pouched carnivore; kangaroos, koalas, and wombats are pouched herbivores. There are marsupial moles and anteaters in addition to Thylacine, an extinct marsupial dog and Thylacoleo, an extinct marsupial lion. The independent evolution of sophisticated pouched mammals upends the widely held view that placental mammals are superior to marsupials. They are in reality a separate and essentially equal branch of the family tree with all of the necessary attributes to establish them as members in good standing of class Mammalia. [5]

The fossil record of the marsupial Metatheria provides a geographic date stamp for the breakup of Pangea punctuated by the Cretaceous-Paleogene (KPg) extinction event 66 million years ago. The oldest marsupial fossil found so far is from northeastern Eurasia in 125 million year old sedimentary rocks. The first Eutherian/placental fossil is “only” 35 million years older. All of the other extant Metatherian fossils from the Mesozoic Era are from the northern continents of Laurasia, there are none in South America or Australia. In that this is their present habitat, mass migration must have occurred. The oldest marsupial mammal fossil in South America is 64 million years ago, indicating that it had crossed from North America when the two were connected for some time by a land bridge; The KPg extinction event must therefore have extirpated the northern non-migratory marsupial contingent while the Eutherians prevailed. The current theory is that marsupials from South America crossed to Australia via Antarctica, when they were contiguous at temperate latitudes about from 55 to 35 million years ago; 45-million-year-old marsupial fossils have been found off the coast of Antarctica. As the only mammals in Australia, the Metatheria flourished as the climate changed from rainforest to open woodlands during the Miocene Epoch, producing marsupial megafauna in parallel with the placental megafauna of North America. Ten-foot kangaroos bounded about with giant koalas and a huge rhinoceros-like marsupial. The larger marsupials became extinct shortly after the arrival of the Aborigines about 40,000 years ago, the same fate that befell their placental brethren coincident with the arrival of the Native Americans 12,000 years ago. While predation by human hunters played a role in these extinctions, it was mostly a matter of environmental, climate-related habitat changes. The smaller marsupials, like the opossum, survived and thrived, and one species moved north to become the Virginia opossum. [6]

Opossum is from the Powhatan dialect of the Algonquian language group, a variation of oposoum meaning “white animal,” its coarse fur ranges from white in the northern reaches of its range to almost black further south. Captain John Smith, one of the founders of the Virginia colony at Jamestown in 1607 described an animal that “hath an head like a swine … tail like a rat … and the bigness of a cat” in a compiled list of Native American words. [7] It was officially classified it as Didelphis virginiana from the Greek di meaning “two” and delphys meaning “womb,” as the females have two uteri, a trait shared with all marsupials, with Virginia as locale of first siting. While not as chimerical as the platypus, opossums do not lack distinction.  Their pointed white faces and piercing, beady black eyes appear ghostly and ghoulish, particularly after dark when such things are imagined. The reverie is not diminished by the demonic prehensile tail that extends for half its body length. The caudal appendage is simian in form and function, adapted to grasping branches for balance and leverage in establishing tree cavity nests. Arboreal acrobatics are further enhanced by opposable thumbs on their hind feet, an attribute they share only with primates and a very few other species, mostly marsupial mammals. The satanic image is complete with the thoroughly fanged jaw that smiles with reptilian menace with a display of fifty teeth, more than any other North American mammal. For the Europeans who first came to the Americas in the sixteenth century, the opossum was sui generis and of consequent great interest.

Vicente Pinzón, the commander of Christopher Columbus’s ship Nina, brought an opossum back to the Spanish regents Ferdinand and Isabella, describing it as a “monster” with the “hinder of a monkey, the feet like a man’s, with ears like an owl; under whose belly hung a great bag, in which it carried the young.”  As the Europeans had never seen a marsupial (there are none in Eurasia or Africa), the opossum came to epitomize the exotic fauna of the Americas. [8] The German cartographer Martin Waldseeműller, renowned for his assigning the name America on a 1507 world map drawn from information gathered on the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, included the opossum in a later woodcut as an evocative symbol of the New World.  Sixteenth Century engravings of the opossum, such as Étienne Delaune’s “America” depicted the peculiar animal with sharp fags and exaggerated claws. Over the course of the next century, the myriad novel plants and animals of the New World inspired the nascent science of comparative anatomy and ultimately to the evolutionary ideas of Darwin. The opossum was transmogrified from monster to mammal by Edward Tyson of the Royal Society who described the anatomy of the female opossum in a treatise in 1698. He correctly surmised that the “feet like a man’s” were for grasping and the “great bag for the young” was a manifestation of maternal care. [9] The opossum was redeemed.

That the Virginia opossum is the only marsupial to thrive in North America is testimony to its synanthropic nature, thriving in and around human habitation. Consequent to their omnivorous adaptability, fecund reproduction and creative, steadfast defenses against predators, they proliferate.  Opossums can and will eat almost anything that is organic, including but not limited to insects, snails, small mammals, fruit, eggs, fledgling birds, and, on occasion, cultivated crops. Those who choose to leave pet food or any other scraps in accessible areas will soon attract the attentions of opossums.  They make their home nests as a sequestered sanctuary for their brood in the hollows of trees, taking advantage of prehensile tails and grasping rear feet to navigate the arboreal habitat. The female opossum is fertile at the age of six months and can have two litters every year; the gestation period is only about two weeks. The young are not born in the pouch but instinctively crawl there from the uterus; this is no mean task as they are blind, furless and bee-size, weighing 100 milligrams. Those that make it seek out one of 13 nipples (twelve in a circle around one in the center) to which they are nurtured for several months. Although senescence is rapid (the average life span of an opossum is only about 3 years), the population is adequately replenished by the number of joeys and the nurturing nature of the species. [10]

Opossums are peerless masters of pantomime, the idiom “playing possum” a linguistic testimonial. They must be, as they lack innate physical defenses like porcupine spines, armadillo shells or bobcat claws, are not very fast, and don’t burrow in hidden dens. When cornered, an opossum will play dead so realistically as to dissuade even the most determined predators.  The mimicry is quite convincing. Stiffened in feigned rigor mortis, teeth bared in the throes of death with the putrid smell of a cadaver from mephitic fluid emitted from glands near the anus; they look, feel and smell like a dead animal. They stoically endure bashing, scratching, and biting remaining mute and motionless until the ruse prevails and the assailant retires. Healed scars are the only evidence of a protracted struggle.  A rabid pretense defense is used to deter aggression from less egregious threats.  The symptoms of rabies are simulated by secreting excessive saliva at the corners of the mouth with the lips drawn baring the full suite of sharp teeth. In addition to overt defenses, opossums have covert protection of an immune system that evolved resistance to the venomous bite of pit vipers, a property first discovered and patented in 1996. Due to the small number   of snakebite victims in the United States and the expense of synthesis, there was no incentive at that time to exploit opossum-based antivenom. With the advent of biomedical engineering, an E. coli bacteria was modified to produce the necessary opossum peptides at a price affordable enough for potential use in India, where there are over 100,000 snakebite deaths every year. [11] Opossums have succeeded against all odds with a combination of chemistry and comic opera, surviving as the fittest.

Like the bison and the turkey, the opossum is an iconic native North American animal. It embodies the spirit of the continent as the home of immigrants, including those of Native American heritage whose Asian genetic heritage is only some 12,000 years removed, almost yesterday in the grand swath of earth-time. The opossum is an equally itinerant immigrant as the only marsupial amid a menagerie of competitive placental mammals of equal need to eat and reproduce.  The ‘possum’ is central to the cultural cuisine of Appalachian and Ozark hill country, where it is hunted as a game animal and consumed as a choice entree according to recipes that have endured for generations. In January of 1909, President-elect William Howard Taft was served an eighteen-pound possum for dinner while visiting Georgia and was quoted in a New York Times article as having remarked “Well, I like possum, I ate very heartily of it last night.”   Numerous live opossums were sent to the White House from his southern constituents in consanguinity. A stuffed “Billy Possum” was created as an alternative to Roosevelt’s established “Teddy Bear,” which was also occasioned by a newspaper article. However, cuddly is an oxymoron for the rat-like, sneering possum and sales failed to meet expectations. [12] Walt Kelly’s Pogo is perhaps the most notable cultural testimony to the opossum; the kindly denizen of the Okefenokee Swamp famously said, “we have met the enemy and he is us” in the poster Kelly made for the first Earth Day in April 1970.

References:

1. Weisbecker, V. and Beck, R. Marsupial and Monotreme Evolution and Biogeography. Nova Science Publishers, 2015
2. Drew, L. I, Mammal the Story of What Makes us Mammals   Bloomsbury Sigma, London, 2017. pp 41-60.
3. Keynes, R. D. ed. Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary. Cambridge University Press. 1988.
4. Darwin, C. Journal of the Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the voyages of HMS Beagle Round the World, John Murray, London 1845.
5. Weisbecker, V. and Beck, R. Op. cit.
6. Ibid.
7. Mithun, M. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge University Press. 2001 p. 332
8. https://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/opossum-facts-behavior-and-habitat-zmaz03aszgoe
9. Tyson, E. “Carigueya Seu Marsupiale Americanum, or The Anatomy of an Opossum, Dissected at Gresham-College by Edw. Tyson, M. D., Fellow of the College of Physicians, and of the Royal Society, and Reader of Anatomy at the Chyrurgeons-Hall in London,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society April 1698 no. 239 p 102 
10. https://opossumsocietyus.org/general-opossum-information/opossum-reproduction-lifecycle/
11. Davenport, M. “Opossum Compounds Isolated to Help Make Antivenom, Scientific American March 2015.
12. Fuller, J. “Possums and Politicians? It’s Complicated.” Washington Post, 24 Sep 2014.

Common Name: Stinkhorn, Carrion fungus – Stink can mean either emitting a strong, offensive odor or, ethically, to be offensive to morality or good taste. Both interpretations apply according to the context herein. Horn is a foundational word of the Indo-European languages that refers to the bony protuberances that adorn the heads of many ungulates like deer. In that it also is associated with supernatural beings like the devil, it may be that this connotation was the original intent for its use. Devil’s dipstick is an idiomatic name for some species of stinkhorn that suggest this interpretation.

Scientific Name: Phallaceae – Phallus is the Greek word for penis. There can be no doubt that the family name was selected due to verisimilitude, the remarkable resemblance of the stinkhorn to male, mammalian, and notably human anatomy.

Potpourri:  Stinkhorns are a contradiction in terms. For some they are the most execrable of all fungi and for others they are elegant, one species even being so named (see Mutinus elegans). They range in size and shape from the very embodiment of an erect male canine (M. caninus named for its resemblance to a dog penis) or human penis (like Phallus ravenelii in above photograph) to colorful raylike extensions ranging outward and upward like a beckoning, stinking squid (picture at right). In every case they are testimony to the creativity of the natural forces of evolution, seeking new ways to survive the rigors of competition. Like the orchids that extend in intricate folds and colors of “intelligent design” to attract one particular insect to carry out pollinator duties, stinkhorns have become “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful” that defy the odds of probability that must therefore lead to evolution as an explanation. [1] The priapic and tentacled extensions can only have been the result of successful propagation for the survival of the species, just like Homo erectus.

The phallic appearance of some stinkhorns is not as outré as it seems at first blush. The priapic shaft elevates spores to promote dissemination. Like a fungal Occam’s razor, stinkhorns evolved the simplest solution―growth straight upward with no side branches, placing the spore gleba at the bulbous apex. The fungus accomplishes this in a manner similar to humans, using water pressure to hold the shaft erect in lieu of blood pressure; hydrostatic versus hemostatic. The phenomenon is part of the fungal life cycle that starts in the mycelium, the underground tangled mass of threadlike hyphae that is the “real fungus.” The stinkhorn starts in the mycelium as an egg-shaped structure called a primordium containing the erectable shaft surrounded by spore laden gleba held firmly in place with jellied filler cloaked with a cuticle. It is the fruiting body of the fungus.  When environmental conditions dictate, the “egg hatches,” and the water pressurized shaft grows outward and upward lubricated by the jelly at a rate of about five inches an hour until it reaches fly over country. Here the biochemistry of smells including hydrogen sulfide (rotten eggs), mercaptan (rotting cabbage), and some unique compounds aptly named phallic acids draws flies from near and far. In ideal conditions, the slime and spores will all be gone in a few hours, and the bare-headed implement of reproduction will soon become flaccid.

Stinkhorns belong to a diverse and now obsolescent group of fungi called Gasteromycetes from gaster, Greek for “belly ” and mykes, Greek for fungus. With the translated common name stomach fungi, they are characterized by the enclosure of their spores inside an egg-shaped mass called a gleba (Latin for “clod”). Hymenomycetes alternatively have their spores arrayed along a surface called a hymenium (Greek for “membrane”) and are by far the larger grouping. The hymenium surface can take the form of gills or pores on the underside of mushroom caps or any of a wide range of other shapes ranging from the fingers of coral fungi to the cups of tree ear fungi. The Gasteromycetes include puffballs and bird’s nest fungi. [2] In the former, the ball of the puffball is the gleba. On aging, a hole called an operculum forms at the top so that the spores can be ejected (puffed) by the action of falling raindrops for wind dispersal. Each “egg” in the bird’s nest is a gleba and is also forced out by the action of falling rain. The projectile gleba affixes to an adjacent surface from which spores are then also air dispersed. Stinkhorns evolved to distribute the spores from the gleba following a completely different evolutionary random sequence. They attract insects to the stink at the top of the horn.  

Flowering plants called Angiosperms are ubiquitous, successful in their partnership with many insects to carry out the crucial task of pollination. While this is primarily a matter of attracting bees and bugs with colorful floral displays and tantalizing scents promising nectar rewards, there are odoriferous variants. Skunk cabbage earned its descriptive name from the fetid aroma that attracts pollinating flies to jumpstart spring with winter’s snow still on the ground. Another member of the Arum Family, the cuckoopint, attracts flies with its smell and then entraps them with a slippery, cup-shaped structure embedded with downward pointing spines, releasing them only at night after they are coated with pollen to then transport. Stinkhorns produce an olfactory gelatinous slime containing its reproductive spores that some insects, mostly flies, are drawn to. It is not clearly established whether the flies eat the goo and later defecate the spores with their frass [3] or whether they are only attracted by the smell, perform a cursory inspection, and then fly off with spores that “adhere to the bodies of the insects and are dispersed by them.” [4]  Some insight can be gained according to entomology, the study of insects. Do they eat the slime or do they merely wallow in it? 

The primary insects attracted to stinkhorn fungi are the blow flies of the Calliphoridae Family and the flesh flies of the Sarcophagidae Family. The term blow fly has an interesting etymology that originates with their characteristic trait of laying eggs on meat that hatch into maggots, the common name for fly larva. Any piece of meat left uncovered in the open long enough for the fly eggs to hatch was once called flyblown, which gradually took on the general meaning of anything tainted. The reversal of the festering meat term gave rise to the term blow fly for its cause. As a purposeful digression, wounded soldiers in the First World War left unattended for hours on the battlefield were sometimes found to be free of the infections that plagued those treated immediately because the blow fly maggots consumed their necrotic tissue. It is now established the maggots also secrete a wound healing chemical called allantoin (probably to ward off competing bacteria) and they are sometimes intentionally used to treat difficult infections. Flesh flies, as the family name suggests (Sarcophagidae means flesh eating in Greek), are also drawn to carrion to eggs for their larvae to eat. [5] If blow flies and flesh flies are attracted to stinkhorns due to the smell of rotting meat, they would presumably lay eggs. So the conundrum is what happened to the maggots? While eggs could hatch in a few days and larvae would feed for a week or two, stinkhorns last for several days, their slime removed in half that time.

Field experiments have verified that stinkhorn fungal spores are indeed ingested by flies. Drosophila, the celebrated fruit fly of early genetic studies, had over 200,000 stinkhorn spores in their intestine when dissected in an experiment. Given the volume available in a fruit fly gut, this quantity adds some perspective to the vanishingly small size of spores. The larger blow flies were found to contain more than a million and a half spores in a similar field evaluation. It was further demonstrated that spores passing through insects and defecated in their frass were fully functional. [6] This is not too surprising as spores evolved for survival under hot, cold, or desiccated environmental extremes; the fly gut is relatively benign by comparison. It is true, then, that flies eat spore bearing material. It is equally evident that there are no maggots in stinkhorn slime, even though this is what the average blow fly does when offered smelly meat. Diversity provides a reasonable basis for this contradiction. There are over 1,000 species of blow fly each to some extent seeking survival within a narrowed niche. Flies of the order Diptera are  noted for their propensity to mutate and adapt. Some species of blow fly and flesh fly deviated from the norm to consume stinkhorn slime for nutritional energy and lay eggs elsewhere. The stinkhorn and the flies they attract are an example of mutualism. Flies are attracted to and gain nutrition from what is essentially a fungal meat substitute and the fungus gains spore dispersion. Many fungi are excellent sources of protein, containing all eight essential amino acids needed by humans.  Flies need protein too.

The startling, trompe d’oeil appearance of a penis in the middle of a forest no doubt attracted humans as soon as there were humans to attract. The first written account of stinkhorns is Pliny the Elder’s Natural History written in the first century CE based on observations made on his military travels throughout the Mediterranean basin. John Gerard’s sixteenth century Herball  identifies the stinkhorn as Fungus virilis penis arecti forma  “which wee  English call Pricke Mushrum, taken from his forme.” [7] The bawdiness of Shakespeare’s rude mechanicals gave way to  Victorian Age corsets and high collars where there was no place for a “prick mushroom.” Charles Darwin’s daughter is accredited with the ultimate act of puritan righteousness. Ranging about the local woods “armed with a basket and a pointed stick” she sought the stinkhorn “her nostrils twitching.” On sighting one she would “fall upon her victim, and then poke his putrid carcass into her basket.” The day ended ceremoniously with the day’s catch “brought back and burnt in the deepest secrecy on the drawing room fire with the door locked because of the morals of the maids.” [8] As the modern era loomed and sexuality came out of the bedroom onto the dance floors of the roaring twenties, stinkhorns regained respectability.

The Doctrine of Signatures was the widely held belief that God intentionally marked/signed all living things to help humans determine how best to exploit them. To those who ascribed to this philosophy, a penis shape could only mean good for sexuality, which in the rarefied view of the pious, could refer only to procreation. Eating stinkhorns undoubtedly arose as either a way to enhance virility or as an aphrodisiac, and probably both. Dr. Krokowski, in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, lectures about a mushroom “which in its form is suggestive of love, in its odour (sic) of death.” [9] The dichotomy of budding love and the stench of death leaves a lot of room for speculation across the middle ground. Stinkhorn potions have been proffered as a cure for everything from gout to ulcers and proposed as both a cure for cancer and the cause of it. [10] There is insufficient research to conclude that any of this is true.

Stinkhorns as food from both a nutritional and gustatory purpose is at the fringes of the brave new world of mycophagy, fungus eating. Food is a matter of culture that extends from the consumption of frog legs in France to the mephitic surströmming of Sweden. Mushrooms have been on the menu for centuries from the shiitake logs of Japan in Asia to the champignons of Parisian caverns in Europe, but almost everything else was considered a toadstool. From the strictly aesthetic standpoint, the consumption of the stinkhorn “egg” dug up before it has a chance to become a smelly phallus has some appeal. Charles McIlvaine, the doyen of mycophagists whose goal at the dawn of the last century was to make the public aware of the “lusciousness and food value” of fungi, describes stinkhorn eggs as “bubbles of some thick substance … that are very good when fried.” His conclusion is that “they demand to be eaten at this time, if at any.” [11] Of more recent note, Dr. Elio Schaechter wrote that sautéing stinkhorn eggs in oil resulted in “a flavorful dish with a subtle, radish-like flavor. The part of the egg destined to become the stem was particularly crunchy, resembling pulled rice cakes.” [12] I am reminded of a Monte Python episode in with Terry Jones is upbraided for selling chocolate-covered frogs made from real frogs, the bones necessary to give the confection a proper crunch.

Not all members of the Stinkhorn family look like a penis. Some have lacey shrouds that extend downward from the tip like a hoop skirt with a hint of femininity. These scaffolds are not for decoration but for scaling. In that it has been established that each stinkhorn species is in partnership with some form of gleba eating insect, the rope ladder can only be to allow crawling bugs like carrion beetles to climb up to the top to access the sporulated slime. The local species is Dictyophora duplicata, (net-bearing, growing in pairs) which is commonly known as netted stinkhorn or wood witch. After the bugs have finished with their slime meal, the result reminds some of a bleached morel. While netted stinkhorns are relatively rare in North America, they are abundant in Asia.

The netted stinkhorn called Zhu Sun meaning bamboo fungus for its native habitat is one of the most sought-after delicacies of Chinese cuisine. It featured prominently in banquets of historical importance, including the visit of U. S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to China in 1970 to reinstate diplomatic relations during the Nixon administration. Kissinger reputedly praised the meal for its quality, but it was never clear whether this was a matter of diplomacy or taste.  Part of the bamboo stinkhorn’s esteem stems from its health benefits according to ancient Chinese medicine. Recent research has confirmed that consumption correlates to lower blood pressure, decreased blood cholesterol, and reduced body fat. In the 1970’s the price of bamboo fungus was over $700 per kilogram but efforts to cultivate it commercially were developed driving the price down to less than $20 per kilogram. [13] It can be found in many Asian markets. The back of the package depicted above offers that “bamboo fungus is a magical fungus. It grows in a special environment, free from pollution. Once mature, it emits a notable light fragrance. Its shape is light weight. Its flavor is delicious. Its texture is silky. It is very nutritious. It is an ideal natural food.” Kissinger may or may not agree.

References: 

1. Darwin, C. On the Origin of Species, Easton Press, Norwalk, Connecticut, 1976 (original London 24 November 1859). P. 45.

2. Kendrick, B. The Fifth Kingdom, 3^rd Edition, Focus Publishing, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 2000. pp 98-101.

3. Wickler, W. “Mimicry” Encyclopedia Brittanica Macropedia 15^th Edition,  William Benton Publisher, Chicago, 1974, Volume 12, pp 218.

4. Lincoff, G. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1981, pp 831-835.

5. Marshall, S. Insects, Their Natural History and Diversity, Firefly Books, Buffalo, New York, 2006, pp 407-408, 481-484.

6. O’Kennon, B. et al, “Observations of the stinkhorn Lysurus mokusin and other fungi found on the BRIT campus in Texas” Fungi, Volume 13, Number 3, pp 41-48.

7. Money, N. Mr. Bloomfield’s Orchard, Oxford University Press , New York, 2002, pp 1-8.

8. Raverat, G. Period Piece: A Cambridge childhood. London,  1960 : Faber and Faber  p. 136

9. Mann, T. . The Magic Mountain, translated by John E. Woods. New York 1927: Alfred A. Knopf. p 364

10. Aurora, D. Mushrooms Demystified 2^nd Edition, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley. California, 1986, pp 766-778.

11.McIlvaine, C. and Macadam, K. One Thousand American Fungi, Dover Publications, New York, 1973 (originally published in 1900 by Bowen-Merrill  Company), pp xiii, 568-576.

12. Schaechter, E. In the Company of Mushrooms, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997, pp 168-173

13. Chang S. and  Miles P. “Dictyophora, formerly for the few“. Mushrooms: Cultivation, Nutritional Value, Medicinal Effect, and Environmental Impact (2nd edition). Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. 2004  pp. 343-355.

Common Name: Wineberry, Wine raspberry, Japanese wineberry, Purple-leaved blackberry, Hairy bramble – Wine is the color of the tiny hairs that cover the stem and carpels, a dark red similar to that attributed to red/burgundy grapes. Berry is a general term applied to any small fruit. It originally derived from the Gothic word weinabasi, a type of grape, evolving to the Old English berie.  Berry is one of only two native words for fruit, referring to anything that was like a grape. The other is apple, given to larger, pome-like fruits. Weinabasi à Wineberry.

Scientific Name: Rubus phoenicolasius –  Rubus is Latin for “bramble-bush” of which blackberry was the most well known of the many types of prickly shrubs that comprise the genus. The species name means purple colored. [1] The Greek word for the color purple is phoinik, which was also the origin of Phoenicia, the ancient land on the eastern Mediterranean Sea coast, present day Lebanon. This littoral area was the source of sea snails from which a very valuable purple dye was extracted. Clothing dyed purple was thus a symbol of wealth and prestige, the term “royal purple” a vestige of its importance. Before the advent of chemical dyes in the early 20^th century, color could only be naturally sourced like blue from indigo.

Potpourri: Wineberry would not make a very good wine and it isn’t really a berry. The first wines were naturally fermented thousands of years ago absent any knowledge of the pivotal role of yeast. The sugars in fruit were the food source for natural local yeasts that gave off alcohol as a byproduct of their metabolism. Grapes are the only common and prolific fruits that have enough natural sugar to produce the “weinabasi” libation discovered by fortuitous accident. Wineberries, like all of the other fruits from which wines might be made, must be supplemented with extra sugar (called chaptalizing) to feed the yeast fungus. Wineberry wine, albeit with a tart berry-like taste, would be a far cry from the rich flavor that the best French terroir can impart.  A berry is a fruit with seeds imbedded in the pulpy flesh, like grapes, watermelons, and tomatoes. Wineberry, like all brambles that comprise the genus Rubus, notably blackberry and raspberry, is an aggregate fruit with a multitude of tiny, clumped “berries”. One could presumably refer to one wineberry fruit as wineberries. Regardless of its unlikely name, wineberry has spread far and wide, becoming a nuisance to the point of becoming an invasive species in the Appalachian Mountain and coastal regions of the Mid-Atlantic states including Maryland and Virginia.[2]

Wineberries are native to central Asia extending eastward to the Japanese archipelago. They were intentionally introduced into North America by horticulturalists in the 1890’s to hybridize with native Rubus plants. The goal was to potentially improve on nature’s accomplishment by hybridizing native plants with introduced species to produce new cultivars with a greater yield of bigger berries and/or resistance to plant diseases and pests.[3] The compelling rationale for new edible crops at this point in time was that world population had surpassed one billion eliciting global food shortage concerns first raised by Thomas Malthus one hundred years earlier. The eponymous Malthusian principle that population rose geometrically (1,2,4,8 …) while agriculture rose only arithmetically (1,2,3,4 …) leading to inevitable famine was impetus for improvements in agricultural products and methods. The first Agricultural Experimental Station in the United States was inaugurated in New York in 1880 with the express purpose of addressing this challenge. Its director E. Lewis Sturtevant established the precept of conducting experimental agriculture to develop new plant foods. By 1887, with 1,113 cultivated plants and another 4,447 plants with edible parts, research focus shifted to developing fruit varieties. The bramble fruits of the genus Rubus, with about 60 known species and a well-established penchant for hybridization, were considered good candidates for experimentation. Wineberries from Asia became part of the mix.[4] As it turned out, the first green revolution of manufactured fertilizer using the Haber-Bosch process (see Nitrogen Article) and the second green revolution internationalizing Norman Borlaug’s high yield wheat put off the impending Malthusian famine, at least so far. There is every reason for Rubus breeding to continue. [5]

Bramble plants of the genus Rubus are so successful at dominating disturbed habitats that bramble has become a euphemism for any dense tangle of prickliness. Wineberry is only a problem because it is better at “brambling” than many other species, even though the stalks are covered with wine-colored hairs and have no prickles. It spreads both vegetatively with underground roots and with seeds spread in the feces of frugivores, animals that eat fruit. The wineberry plant consists of a rigid stem called a cane that extends upward, unbranching at first, reaching lengths of up to 9 feet. Vegetative spreading is enhanced by tip-rooting which occurs when the longer canes (> 3 feet) arch over and reach the ground, where adventitious roots form to establish an extension. In dense clusters, tip-rooting predominates. It takes two years to make a wineberry, as the first year primocanes apply all growth to cane extension and leaf formation for photosynthesis. The second year floricanes become woody and produce flowers that become fruits if fertilized. Wineberry flowers are hermaphroditic and are therefore less dependent on pollinators since there is no need to transport male pollen from the stamen of one flower to the female pistils of another. [6] Each wineberry fruit is protected by husks densely covered with the signature wine-colored hairs that are remnants of the sepals that comprise the calyx at the base of the flower. [7]

Wineberry is just one of many invasive species that have come to dominate large swaths of the forest understory in the twenty first century. Like kudzu planted for soil remediation of the Dust Bowl and plantain imported as a vital European medicinal, wineberry was introduced with good intention―the improvement of native berry stocks through hybridization. But, as has become increasingly obvious, the complexities of local ecology can result in mountains from molehills as “Frankenplants” take advantage of their reproductive strengths over the competition. There are a number of reasons for the success of wineberry in its unwitting but instinctual quest to become the one and only species wherever it can. It is an aggressive pioneer plant in any disturbed area. One study in Japan found that wineberry covered almost two percent of an extensive ski area after clearcutting, showing high phenotypic plasticity in its adaptations. Its tolerance to shade from tree growth due to old field succession of open areas promotes dense wineberry thickets that are the hallmark of its aggression. [9] On the other hand, all Rubus brambles are apt to dominate disturbed areas like roadside cuts, where one typically finds both raspberries and blackberries in addition to wineberries. There is some irony in that recent DNA analysis of the genus indicates that the first Rubus brambles evolved in North America and subsequently invaded Eurasia without any human intervention. They are brambles, after all. [10].

On the positive side, wineberries are tasty and nutritious, providing a snack for the passing hiker and food for the birds and the bees. A popular field guide to edible plants includes wineberries with raspberries and blackberries as uniformly edible, notably “good with cream and sugar, in pancakes, on cereal, and in jams, jellies, or pies.” [11] The consumption of Rubus fruits by humans precedes the historical record. Given that Homo erectus evolved from the fruit eating great apes, the impetus would be a matter of wired instinct. It is hypothesized that the reason that primates are the only mammals with red color vision is evolutionary pressure to find usually reddish fruit for sustenance and survival in the jungle forest. Historical documentation of the consumption of aggregate fruits was established by Pliny the Elder in 45 CE. He noted in describing raspberries that the people of Asia Minor gathered what he called “Ida fruits” (from Turkey’s Mount Ida). The subgenus of raspberries which includes wineberries is appropriately named Idaeobatus. It is probable that the Romans began to cultivate some form of raspberry as early as 400 CE. [12] Rubus aggregates were also important medicines in addition to the more obvious nutritional attributes. They contain secondary metabolites such as anthocyanins and phenolics which are strong antioxidants, contributing to general good health. Native Americans used them for a variety of ailments ranging from diarrhea to headache, although there is no indication that the effects were anything beyond placebo. [13]

All things considered, it is hard to get worked up over wineberries as pernicious pests. Granted they tend to spread out and take over but then again, so do all of the other brambles. In most cases, the area in question falls into the category of a “disturbed” habitat. While this could be due to storm damage, it is almost universally due to human activities. Road cuts through the forest may be necessary for any number of reasons, but they are initially unsightly tracts of rutted mud unsuited for hiking. Once nature takes over, the edges, now in direct sunlight, become festooned with whatever happens to get there first and grows fast. And what could be more appropriate than a bunch of canes covered with wine colored fuzz bearing sweet fruits?   

References: 

1. https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/taxon/taxonomydetail?id=32416

2. https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/home/plantProfile?symbol=RUPH

3. “Wineberries”  Plant Conservation Alliances, Alien Plant Working Group. 20 May 2005.

4. Hedrick, U. “Multiplicity of Crops as a Means of Increasing the Future Food Supply” Science, Volume 40 Number 1035, 30 October 1914, pp 611-620.

5. Foster, T. et al “Genetic and genomic resources for Rubus breeding: a roadmap for the future” Horticulture Research, Volume 116, 15 October 2019 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41438-019-0199-2   

6. Innes, R.  Rubus phoenicolasius. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer) 2009. https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/shrub/rubpho/all.html   

7. Swearingen, J., K. Reshetiloff, B. Slattery, and S. Zwicker  “Plant Invaders of Mid-Atlantic Natural Areas”. Invasive Plants of the Eastern United States. 2002 https://www.invasive.org/eastern/midatlantic/ruph.html   

8. Wilson, C. and Loomis, W. Botany, 4^th Edition, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1967, pp 285-304.

9. Innes op cit.

10. Carter, K. et al. “Target Capture Sequencing Unravels Rubus Evolution”. Frontiers in Plant Science. 20 December 2019 Volume 10 page 1615.

11. Elias, T. and Dykeman, P. Edible Wild Plants, A North American Field Guide, Sterling Publishing Company, New York, 1990, pp 178-185.

12. Bushway, L et al Raspberry and Blackberry Production Guide for the Northeast, Midwest, and Eastern Canada, Natural Resource, Agriculture, and Engineering Service (NRAES) Cooperation Extension, Ithaca , NY. May, 2008. https://www.canr.msu.edu/foodsystems/uploads/files/Raspberry-and-Blackberry-Production-Guide.pdf     

13. Native American Ethnobotany http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=rubus%20&page=1