CMS Enews - May 2020

CMS ENews is published monthly by the Cascade Mycological Society (CMS) from September thru May. CMS is located in Eugene, Oregon. If you have questions, comments, or contributions for the CMS Enews, email us at newsletter@cascademyco.org. Also feel free to share the CMS Enews.

Dr. Roo Vandegrift, producer of the forthcoming documentary film Marrow of the Mountain, is a queer scientist and illustrator. He received his doctorate in mycology (the study of mushrooms and fungi) from the University of Oregon’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution, doing much of his dissertation work on the ecology of fungi at Los Cedros, in Ecuador. He has published peer-reviewed research in internationally acclaimed journals such as Microbiome, Biotropica, and the Journal of Tropical Conservation Science. Most recently, he was awarded a National Geographic Explorer grant to coordinate a multi-disciplinary, international expedition to expand knowledge of the biodiversity at the Los Cedros Biological Reserve.

If you would like to see how Roo kept busy while "sheltering in place" in Ecuador (hint below), check out his article featured in The North American Mycoflora Project Deep Funga Blog.

Update on the Macrofungi of Lane County Oregon Project
By Dr. Bitty Roy

CMS's Macrofungi of Lane County Oregon project on iNaturalist is an increasingly valuable tool. We started on the 5^th of March 2018. As of the 16^th of May 2020, we have 6257 observations of 758 species made by 572 people, of whom 212 are members of the project. It is now possible to use our iNat project as a guide to our local fungi! We also know from our iNat records that we have dried specimens of more than 300 of our 758 species to date (more species are being added all the time). Only 40 of the 758 have been sequenced so far, but we are ready to ship another 96 the minute the moratorium on sequencing lifts (it has been in place since October). Of the 40 we have sequenced, five (13%) may be new species (not in Genbank and not in the literature so far), but we need to work more on these to be sure. In addition, we were able to attach names to some mystery Mycena, Russula and Inocybe, and added a new Agaricus to the state, Agaricus porphyrocephalus var. pallidus.

Note - Bitty has been named to the North American Mycoflora project Board of Directors.

Full disclosure - I have not read either of these books. I have ordered "Amanitas of North America". "Entangled Life". "Entangled Life" also sounds very interesting; rrom reviews I have read it is packed with information about fungi and is written in a literary style versus a textbook style. Do your research, and decide for yourself.

Amanitas of North America

If you are interested in learning more about the Amanita genus of mushrooms you may want to check out "Amanitas of North America"; due to be published in June 2020.

If you order prior to the June release you will receive 1/3 off of the list price. Click here to learn more at Fungimag.com

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Future

Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works.

“True to his name, Merlin takes us on a magical journey deep into the roots of Nature—the mycelial universe that exists under every footstep we take in life. Merlin is an expert storyteller, weaving the tale of our co-evolution with fungi into a scientific adventure. Entangled Life is a must-read for citizen scientists hoping to make a positive difference on this sacred planet we share.” - Paul Stamets, author of "Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World."

More information on the publisher's website, Good Reads, and an article in The New Yorker.

Is fungus the answer to climate change? Student who grew a mushroom canoe says yes - Ayers, who displayed her “Myconoe” at the 2019 Nebraska State Fair, has taken the canoe out for three test floats, including one in which two people comfortably sat inside. The boat is still alive, which means it fruits — grows mushrooms — each time they take it out for a paddle. Read more at NBCnews.com

Citizen Science is a Safe Way to Weather the Pandemic - Have the calls for social distancing in response to COVID-19 left you with cabin fever? Got squirrely kids? Here’s an activity that is timely, safe and fun. The goal is to see how many species of plants, animals and fungi you and your neighbors can record in your neighborhood. Read more at Deep Funga Blog.

Why People Think Mushrooms Could Save The World - There is now a slew of startups touting fungi as an environmental game-changer, able to make the construction industry greener, replace animal products in our food and clothes, and even clean up pollution and eat through waste. Read more at Huffington Post

Scientists create glowing plants using mushroom genes - A team of scientists based in Russia and Austria report how they inserted four genes from the bioluminescent mushroom Neonothopanus nambi into the DNA of tobacco plants. The upshot is plants that glow with a greenish hue visible to the naked eye. “They glow both in the dark and in the daylight.” Read more at The Guardian

I Ordered Two Bags of Dirt, and a Week Later I Had Mushrooms - I was three weeks into quarantine and out of my job as a restaurant manager when two mushroom blocks arrived at my doorstep. Their development was obviously remarkable, but another remarkable thing happened: I was going to sleep excited, and waking up excited too. Read more at Bon Appetite

It's just a crazy mushroom! - The morel mushroom found in Troy, Missouri has quickly become the talk of the town. “To tell you the truth I wasn’t even hunting for mushrooms when I found this thing. I had some barrels stacked along the creek and I went to move a barrel then I was shocked at what I saw.” Read more at KDSKA News

Dr. Bronner’s Donates $1 Million to Oregon Psychedelic Mushroom Legalization Efforts - “My family is no stranger to severe depression and anxiety, and like many Americans, we yearn for better solutions. This therapy helps people to process difficult and traumatic emotions and experiences, break destructive patterns of thought and behavior — and to love, integrate and forgive themselves and each other.Read more at Rolling Stone

Forget CBD. Mushrooms Are the Beauty and Wellness Superfood You Need Right Now - The experts we spoke with say mushrooms’ health and beauty powers are legitimate but don’t pertain to the grocery store variety or the psychedelic drug. Instead, the in-demand fungi are a new class of supercharged mushrooms. Read more at the Robb Report

Fact Check: No, eating morel mushrooms won't make you susceptible to coronavirus - The information, which has been posted by several users and shared thousands of times, was intended as humor. While created as a joke, there is no guarantee that everyone who viewed the post got that message. Read more at
The Des Moines Register

Oregon Camaigns to Legalize Psilocybin Mushrooms and Decriminalize Drugs Team Up to Qualify for Ballot - Tom Eckert, a chief petitioner for the psilocybin effort told Marijuana Moment that "IP 34 and IP 44 have always enjoyed a supportive relationship with regard to gathering signatures, and that will certainly continue until both campaigns cross the finish line and make the November ballot." Read more at Marijuana Moment

By Ron Patton

This being my last article for this mushroom season (please, don’t all clap at once) I thou

ght I would use this space to do a kind of seasonal wrap-up. I’m sure some of you were hoping to see photos showing buckets of morels. But no, for that to happen the morels would have needed to pop up in our house on the carpet or linoleum, and that didn’t happen. So, instead I will start with an amazing photo of one of our Shiitake logs that was inoculated about 18 months ago. I submerged the oak log in water for 48 hours then put it in our garage where it stays fairly warm and is out of direct sunlight. As I do not like to be braggadocios, I’ve invented a fictitious friend named Casper to comment on my mushroom log instead.

Casper: Damn Ron, that log is loaded with shiitake mushrooms.
Ron: Yes well, I guess I got lucky as I’ve had some failures before.
Casper: Are you kidding me? You’re like an inoculation genius, a regular shiitake savant.
Ron: Please, you’re making me blush.
Casper: This is the best crop of shiitake mushrooms from one log I’ve ever seen.
Ron: Thank you, you’re being very kind.
Casper: I’ve seen videos of Japanese experts doing this and you’re much, much better.
Ron: OK, let’s not overdo it Casper.
Casper: What? Isn’t that what you invented me for? To brag on you, stroke your ego?
Ron: Well yes but even that’s over the top for me so thanks but, you’re fired.

Moving right along, I do want to show a few more pictures of some random mushrooms popping up in our garden beds and pots where we layered them last fall with wood chips, wood pellets, and straw. In turn, all the nutrients released from these layers of organic material by fungi and other microbes have created a great soil amendment for our spring plantings. Like us, I hope you also took the advice of Charles Dowding and encouraged fungi into your garden by top-layering with organic materials. Edible or not, these fungi play a very important role in the health and well being of our soil and are very

cool to look at when they do pop up. By the way, the Garden Giant mushrooms (Stropharia rugoso-annulata) in the top left of the composite picture are quite tasty and return every year. I’ve also included a picture of our crop of snow pea plants growing where the mushrooms in the top right of the above picture came up. I believe they are Agrocybe praecox and are also listed as edible, although we have not tried them. On the other hand, the resulting snow peas that are just now developing will most assuredly be tried over and over again.

So, we know what’s going on at our house today but what about the earlier part of our mushroom hunting

season. While it seems like such a long time ago, it was one of our better seasons of the last decade. We blew away our old Mount Pisgah Arboertum Mushroom Festival record by displaying 539 species of mushrooms, which included 88 new to the show. There was also an abundance of some of our favorite woodland mushrooms like King Boletes, Queen Boletes, Matsutake, Chanterelles, Lobsters, and Shrimp Russula to name a few. It also seems each fall showcases a few very prolific fruiting species and the several that come to mind this season are Pigs Ear, Admirable Bolete, Cauliflower mushroom, and the amazingly beautiful Coccora, which we found fruiting in fairy rings. If that wasn’t

enough, the hedgehog season started out with nice fruitings of the larger Hydnum repandum followed by Hydnum umbilicatum, commonly known as the Bellybutton Hedgehog. We also had some great CMS sponsored mushroom forays where everyone came home with mushrooms and big smiles on their faces. All in all I can honestly say that we had a great time foraging in the woods for some of our favorite mushrooms, listening to interesting and informative speakers at our CMS meetings, and helping to make the annual October Mushroom Festival a great success. Great job everyone.

Almost lastly, I must confess that morel mushroom fever has hit Sandy pretty hard as she kept seeing Facebook postings of boxes and bags with morels. And since we did not have any popping up inside or outside our house, I gave in to the pressure, made a picnic lunch, loaded up the car, and we headed east to hunt for morels. Our objective was to hunt in and around the Suttle Lake area where we had some success years earlier. After arriving, we spent an hour or so hiking around with our eyes fixated on the ground looking for that first sign that morels were in the area. Well, having zero luck at Suttle Lake, Sandy suggested driving further east toward Sisters to the

Metolius area. When we got there, it took around another hour of hunting but Sandy finally found the hot spot for morels and success was achieved. After all that picking, we then drove to the head of the Metolius River trailhead, grabbed a picnic table and enjoyed lunch while chatting about our big score. I believe this photo of our success after driving 230 miles fully encapsulates why I am so reluctant to venture out on a quest that almost assuredly will result in what you see here. I could say this is a glass half full, half empty situation, but really. Do you see a box half full here? I’d be OK with just quarter full but one lone morel! On the bright side, we did get out of the house and spent part of the day in the woods, although most was spent sitting and driving around in the car. At least for now, Sandy has recovered from her morel fever, that is until she reads the next posting of someone else filling boxes and bags with morels. Please, if you do find a big score of morels, wait to make your online postings for sometime in late August. By the way, that lonely morel in the box became the star feature in an egg scramble that Sandy said was the best ever. I don’t know about it being the best ever but I dare say it was the most expensive egg scramble we’ve ever made.

Lastly, Sandy and I hope all our fellow mushroom enthusiasts and their families are staying safe and sound during these tumultuous times. I’ve seen people doing many innovative things to help them manage these difficult circumstances we now find ourselves in. If anything, we are resilient and there is no doubt we will all see each other again on a mushroom hunt on some future occasion, just not a morel hunt anytime soon.

Stay safe, stay healthy,
Ron & Sandy

P.S. If you do decide to venture out east be prepared for the one thing we did not expect to see - lots of people!

Below are upcoming mushroom events in the PNW, not sponsored by CMS.

As of publishing date all of these events are open for registration; that may change. Please take caution in making a decision as to the safety of attending an event.

June 29-Jul 4, 2020 (Westfir, OR) - MycoRemediation Design Course by Fungi for the People - Learn the practices and theories of working with Mushrooms and other Fungi to heal toxic soils, filter water, restore ecosystems, and empower communities. More info here ($750).

August 13-16, 2020 (Telluride Mushroom Festival) - Have you always wanted to attend this festival but thought the location was prohibitive. You may be able to attend this years festival virtually! Details on fee schedules and programming layout to come in June/July once they have more information to make better informed decisions. More info here.

September 11-21, 2020 (Mulino, OR) - Radical Mycology Convergence 2020 - The sixth Radical Mycology Convergence will again be held in Oregon (a permanent thing now), this is a big event with a lot of people, activities, and learning opportunities (various pricing options) More info here

October 18, 2020 (Ashland, offered by the Siskiyou Field Institute) - Edible Mushrooms of the Southern Cascades - taught by CMS Member Mike Potts. Fee includes a classroom intro. and a foray. This class fills fast, more info here ($63-$70).

October 19-25, 2020 (Port Townsend, WA) - The 2020 International Fungi & Fibre Symposium - An early notice for this one since I do not know how often it is held in the USA, or how fast it fills up - Registration is now open. More info here ($1100-$1450).

November 14, 2020 (Siskiyou Field Institute in Selma OR) - Edible mushrooms of the Siskiyous - taught by CMS Member Mike Potts. Fee includes a classroom intro. and a foray. This class fills fast, more info here ($63-$70).

November 20-22, 2020 (Siskiyou Field Institute in Selma OR) - Exploring the world of Fungi. Taught by Scott Loring. Come search for and learn to identify edible, poisonous, and other mushrooms above the ground and truffles below in a variety of Siskiyou locations in Josephine and Del Norte counties. An emphasis will be placed on truffles. Time will be split between field and classroom/lab activities. More info here ($157-$175).

December 6, 2020, (Eugene Textile Center) - Dying with Mushrooms - Come explore mushroom dyes with mycologist and dyer Cheshire Mayrsohn. We will extract color from several common, local dye mushrooms. You will take home a spectrum of yarn samples, literature to carry on your own experiments, and two mushroom dyed silk scarves. More info here ($80).

About the Speaker

Looking for some new reads?

Fungi in the News

(AKA, a roundup of recent CMS Facebook posts)

Mushroom Season Wrap-Up