Penicillium rubens

Penicillium rubens Biourge

Edibility

Edibility unknown — do not eat

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Lookalikes

No lookalikes are recorded for this species yet. That does not mean there are none. Many mushrooms look alike, so never rely on appearance alone.

Season

When this species has been recorded, by month, from open-licensed US and Canada observations. It shows when people report it, not a guarantee it is fruiting.

The highlighted bar is the current month.

View season data as a table

Recorded observations of Penicillium rubens by month
Month	Records
January	0
February	0
March	0
April	1
May	0
June	0
July	0
August	0
September	0
October	0
November	0
December	2

Where it is found

States and provinces with the most records. Check the foraging rules for the place you plan to visit.

Illinois 1 records · Foraging rules
New Mexico 1 records · Foraging rules

All state and province foraging laws

About

Penicillium rubens is a species of fungus in the genus Penicillium and was the first species known to produce the antibiotic penicillin. It was first described by Philibert Melchior Joseph Ehi Biourge in 1923. In 1928, Alexander Fleming at St Mary's Hospital, London discovered that the fungus produced an antibiotic that killed bacteria, and named the unknown compound penicillin. For the discovery and development of penicillin, Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Florey. There was long history of controversy on the exact identification of the original penicillin-producing species and was variously identified as Penicillium rubrum, P. notatum, and P. chrysogenum among others. It was only after genomic comparison and phylogenetic analysis in 2011 that the species was resolved as P. rubens. P. rubens is the best source of penicillins such as benzylpenicillin (G), phenoxymethylpenicillin (V) and octanoylpenicillin (K). It also produces another class of antibiotics, cephalosporins. It is also the source of other important bioactive compounds such as andrastin, chrysogine, fungisporin, roquefortine, and sorbicillins.

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original article.

Recent finds

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More in the genus Penicillium

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