ASYMMETRICA-LANATA 427 



length ; conidiophores and fruiting branches more conspicuously roughened, 

 but colony coloration essentially as above. 



Species description based upon NRRL 877, Thorn's No. 5, isolated by 

 him in Storrs, Connecticut, in 1904 from French Camembert cheese. The 

 strain has remained in continuous laboratory culture since that time with- 

 out apparent change in cultural appearance or structural details. Strain 

 NRRL 878, from the Biourge Collection as Penicillium camemberti 

 (Biourge's No. 5), is equally representative of the species. A culture of 

 P. camemberti received from the Centraalbureau as having come from 

 Thom in 1931 duplicates NRRL 877 in all particulars, and in all probabil- 

 ity originated from Thom's No. 5 since that culture was widely distributed. 



Strain NRRL 1740 received in 1941 from Professor Hastings of the 

 University of Wisconsin as Penicillium caseicolum is believed to represent 

 a variant of P. camemberti. It differs from the species in producing looser 

 textured colonies with conidiophores generally somewhat coarser and 

 colony colors near tilleul-buff (Ridgway, PL XL) and showing no bluish 

 green. The reader should bear in mind that P. camemberti and P. casei- 

 colum are closely related and in cheese manufacture are used to produce 

 essentially the same type of products which carry the same name. It is 

 not, therefore, surprising that variant strains more or less intermediate 

 between the two are occasionally encountered. 



The Camembert cheese mold with its pale green conidia appears first 

 in the literature variously as Penicillium aromaticum III or P. aromaticum 

 casei III in Johan-Olsen's (Sopp) discussion of cheese ripening (1898). 

 No adequate description appeared. Later the French workers, notably 

 Maze (1905), called it P. album. He used P. candidum Link for the pure 

 white form, but without diagnosis, and ignored the previous use of the 

 name P. album by Preuss (1851). Thom found the form with gray-green 

 conidia to be the dominant organism pre.sent upon the surface of the 

 better grades of imported Camembert and demonstrated its function in 

 cheese ripening — hence his description and application of the name to the 

 responsible fungus in 1906. Sopp included it in his Monograph (1912) 

 as P. camembert. In the cheese industry in Normandy, P. camemberti 

 is used more commonly than P. caseicolum, and produces a softer cheese 

 preferred by many judges (fig. 111). 



Drewes (1937) reported a Penicillium somewhat different from P. 

 camemberti to dominate the microflora of "sauermilchkase." The name 

 P. henebergi was proposed but no adequate description was offered. 



Occurrence and Significance 



The Camembert-Brie group of cheeses, originating in northern France, 

 obtain their texture and flavor from the proteolytic activity of molds be- 



