A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1187 entries
truffle
A truffle is the fruiting body of a fungus that develops entirely underground, as a hard warty lump among the roots of oak, hazel, beech, or pine. Because it never breaks the surface, it cannot release spores into the air, so it produces an intense volatile smell instead and depends on animals to dig it up and eat it. The best-known are the black Périgord and the white Alba.
Etymology
The word came into English through French from a Latin word that also gives Italian tartufo and, by a longer route, German kartoffel, the potato, which was named for its resemblance to a truffle when it arrived in Europe. So the potato is, etymologically, a truffle. The Latin is generally read as a variant of the word for a lump or a swelling.
Notes
Truffles cannot be farmed in the ordinary sense but can be encouraged. Seedling trees are inoculated with the fungus and planted out, and a truffière may produce after seven to ten years or may never produce at all. The scent chemistry appears to be tuned to whatever mammal digs them locally.