Tony from the North West Fungus group has just circulated an email to the group:
"Here is a tip to assist you when trying to decide what a bedbug smells like.
According to Henry Hitchings in his book 'The Secret Life of Words', the herb, coriander, derives from the Greek word, koris. Koris means smelling of bedbugs.
Hey Presto.
Just pop into Tesco on the way to your next foray for a quick sniff. Cheaper than going all the way to Greece."
I did a bit of research and responded as follows:
That’s an interesting suggestion, sniffing coriander. I have just been putting fresh coriander into our vegetable lasagne. If that’s what bed bugs smell like, then they can’t be all bad. But the coriander didn’t remind me of
Lactarius quietus one bit.
Here’s a link to a website with some similar information to your source:
Medicinal Spices Exhibit - UCLA Biomedical Library: History & Special Collections
“The name coriander is derived from the Greek word koris, meaning bedbug, since the unripe seeds and leaves when crushed have a smell suggestive of a crushed bedbug.”
But on this website…
http://www.theherbspiral.com/CorianderHistory.htm
… the word “koris” is said to mean “stinky bug.”
(I don’t have a greek dictionary, but if you use the AltaVista Babel Fish translation tool, “koris” translates from Greek to English as “girl”… so perhaps we’d better not go down that route!)
Of course the well propounded theory is that
Lactarius quietus smells of bedbugs. The bedbug is
Cimex lectularius in the family Cimicidae.
So what do bedbugs smell like? Here are some suggestions from trawling the web:
“The data seems to show that the odor of a bed bug infestation, though distinct, is too subtle for amateur bug detectives. Bed bugs are said to smell like sweet, rotten raspberries, and it's also said that an infested room smells like almonds;”
“If the infestation is particularly heavy, then a slight minty smell is apparent when the area is first entered, some people say it smells like old dirty laundry.”
“the odor that bed bugs emit are like a musk, the scent created by an animal's (deer musk is used in many fragrances) stink gland between their stomach and their genitals”
Some interesting descriptions there and it just goes to show how personal the recognition and description of particular smells can be. However, nothing in these descriptions reminds me much of the oily smell I would associate with
Lactarius quietus. But perhaps that’s not fair, if you actually have to squash the bedbug to get the distinctive smell, as suggested on the first website link above.
The association of the smell of
Lactarius quietus with the smell of bedbugs is quite common throughout the mycological literature. For example, in the New Naturalist publication on
Fungi by Brian Spooner and Peter Roberts:
“Commonest of the exclusive oak associates is
Lactarius quietus, the oak milk cap, with its distinctive oily smell, said to be of bed bugs. Also common [is]
Lactarius subumbonatus, with a similar but even stronger smell…” (page 268).
But this association with bedbugs is not universal. The authors of
The Genus Lactarius (Fungi of Northern Europe Volume 2) describe the smell as “rather strong and characteristic, sweetish, like
Pentamogium bugs or fondue oil”.
Similarly,
The Genus Hygrocybe by David Boertmann (Fungi of Northern Europe Volume 1), Hygrocybe quieta is described as having a “faint smell like Lactarius quietus or like bugs (Pentatomidae)”.
The Pentatomidae is an entirely separate family from the Cimicidae, which includes the bedbugs. The Pentatomidae includes the Shield Bugs and the Stink Bugs. I am not sure which ones in particular are supposed to smell like
Lactarius quietus (or vice versa) and I am not really familiar with the smell of pentatomid bugs. I am also not sure where
Pentamogium fits in.
Obviously we need someone to do the experiment:
– sacrifice your bedroom to bedbugs and see what smell develops
– crush a few of the bedbugs
– collect and sniff a few pentatomid bugs
– squash some fresh (or should that be unripe?) coriander leaves
– bring home copious amounts of
Lactarius quietus (and
Lactarius subumbonatus and
Hygrocybe quieta while you’re at it)
– compare all of the above smells and see which matches most closely to the distinctive smell of the fungi
– write to all potential authors of new fungi books and get them all to get their facts straight
So any offers to undertake the experiment?
Any thoughts from our insect experts on the bug aspects of this topic?
Anything anyone wants to add?
Ken
Perhaps I should just have waited to see how much damage the invertebrates did.
Linear Mode
