Buried treasure
Truffle farmer Damian Robinson is striding along a line of hazelnut trees, charting the mysteriously symbiotic relationships in the fungal world, when he offers a theory: “We are one chromosome removed from a pig and that’s probably why we like the smell of truffl es so much.”
Damian doesn’t have a pig. He has a fiercely intense Jack Russell that’s a few chromosomes further down the DNA chain but the dog knows his own mind. He doesn’t give a fig about truffles. Frisbee likes Schmackos.
“Find the truffle,” Damian cries. “Find the truffl e.” The dog swings into action, slow-motion break dancing over tufted grass, nose snuffling and paw tapping this spot, then that. His quarry has the earthy piquancy of, what, exactly? The truffle pheromone, androstenol, is almost identical to the one produced by male pigs. And men’s armpits.
“Here,” Damian enthuses. He’s down on his knees in a battered beret, digging in the black dirt, disgorging a black diamond. Tuber melanosporum. Job
