Among FungiCascade Mycological Society Newsletter September 2007 Vol. 8 Issue 3

Yes, it’s almost that time of year again!CMS News

June Board ElectionsThis past June, the membership of the

Cascade Mycological Society elected a new Boardof Directors.

Reelected were the following:Dean Johnston, Michele Pak, Chris Melotti, SethMiller, Grace Pugh, Matthew Johnson andMeredith Allen.

New Board members elected are: Dave Thomas and Trudy Nelson.August Officer Elections

At the August Board meeting, the Boardelected the following officers:Dean Johnston, PresidentMichele Pak, Vice-PresidentChris Melotti, TreasurerMatthew Johnson, Secretary

CMS Board meetings are generally held onthe first Thursday of the month in the home of aBoard member. If you are interested in joining theBoard or attending a Board meeting, contact one ofthe members for specific time, date, and location.General Meetings

September 13, 2007 is the date for the firstCMS general meeting of the year.

From Sept. thru April, CMS holds generalmeetings on the second Thursday of the month at7:30 at Lane Community College, building 16,room 115. (See our website for directions:www.cascademyco.org) These meetings are opento CMS members and the public. The meetingsusually start with a brief sharing of news aboutcoming CMS activities, such as forays or othermycologically significant events, reports of recentfinds and maybe a little show and tell (or identify).This is followed by a featured presentation or talkon a mycological related subject. Meetingsgenerally last until about 9:30.

September General MeetingThe theme for this month’s meeting (9/13)

will be Fungi in our Area: getting started with easy toidentify mushrooms.

Meeting starts at 7:30, at Lane CommunityCollege, building 16, room 115. The speaker is TBA.See our website: cascademyco.org for directions andupdates on speakers and other events.

August rains bring on the MushroomsEugene, Saturday Market, late August 2007

Freeman Rowe was spotted selling what mayhave been the first Chanterelles of the season.Freeman reports that these Chanterelles are the best.Dry, crisp, and full of flavor. The “Coast range” wasas close as he would identify the location of his finds.

Others selling chanties at the market alsoidentified the coast range as the place to find “tons” ofthem.

This editor received a call in late August toidentify some Boletus edulis found in the Waldo Lakearea and a call from Helsinki, Finland to tell me thechanterelles were coming on strong. Finally, there’sanother fruiting of Agaricus xanthoderma sproutingin my backyard, and in among them was a Boletussmithii. The season has begun.

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Mt. Pisgah Mushroom ShowThis year’s show is set for Sunday, August

28, 2007. Put that date on your calendars. We arehoping for another fabulous year in the beautifulnew White Oak Pavilion.

Plans are already in the making and asalways, volunteers are needed for collecting (dropoff specimens at the Pavilion on Sat. 9/27 between10:30 am & 1:30 pm), and set up (Sat. 9/27between 9:00 am & 2:00 pm). You can get moreinfo on volunteer opportunities from:webmaster@cascademyco.org

FORAY SCHEDULEThe first foray of the season is scheduled to

take place on Sunday, September 30, led by ourown foray coordinator, Grace.

As always, CMS forays leave from theSouth Eugene High School parking lot (north eastside, 19th and Hilyard), at 9:00 a.m. Carpooling isencouraged. Make sure you dress appropriately forthe weather and hiking in the woods. It’s also agood idea to bring a whistle, a basket and/or somesmall paper bags, water, and a lunch.

LCC Mushroom ClassMarcia Peeters will again be teaching the

mushroom class at LCC this Fall. Following is abrief description from the LCC on line catalog:“Through field, classroom, and laboratory workthis course will help students identify and developan understanding of mushroom evolution,structure, function and place in the ecology of theareas we study.” 30-36 lecture hours. 30-36 labhours. Classes are M/W 2:30 pm to 5:20. Withrequired Sat. or Sun. trips to Cascades and CentralOregon Coast. As of 9/6, space was still available.

CMS Youngest MemberThe newest and youngest member of the

CMS family, Theadora Wren Georgitis enteredthe world Saturday evening, August 11, 2007. The daughter of long-time member Susie Holmsand Nathan Goergitis weighed in at 8 pounds, 1ounce.

We are all happy to welcome Theodorainto the family and wish her and her familyhappy foraying. Three spores!

FS/BLM Fungi UpdateRegional Forest Service and BLM Fungi Effortsin Oregon and Washington Kelli Van Norman, Inventory CoordinatorInteragency Special Status/Sensitive SpeciesProgram: www.fs.fed.us/r6/sfpnw/issssp

Forest Service (FS) Region 6 andOregon/Washington Bureau of Land Management(BLM) have more than 60 fungal species on oursensitive and special status species lists. In addition,we have almost 140 fungal species on our "strategic"list, which are species that may only be suspected onFS and BLM lands, have some taxonomic question,are undescribed, or are Oregon Heritage List 3 orWashington Heritage Review 1 or 2. Our species listsare posted on the ISSSSP web site at: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/sfpnw/issssp/agency-policy/.

If you find any of these species on FS, BLM oreven state lands such as State Parks, please collect andpreserve a specimen and write down your surveyinformation such as date, observer, habitat, substrate,and accurate location information, which is key torelocating the site, as well as identification notes.

The Oregon Natural Heritage InformationCenter (ORNHIC) tracks species locations and theirdata. Please submit your species location data toORNHIC (http://oregonstate.edu/ornhic/). Considerdonating the collected specimen to the Oregon StateUniversity Herbarium where it will be available toothers for further research. Some of these species areso rarely seen that there are few people who canidentify them. Having a specimen to verifyidentifications is critical.

We have a number of FS and BLM effortshappening to gather more information about thesespecies.

1. Species Maps: This spring we had the mapsupdated for each special status and sensitive fungispecies at:http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/sfpnw/issssp/planning-tools/).We've recently updated our species list so we'll soonbe adding more species maps.

2. Regional Inventory: A Fungal Surveysolicitation went out for bids in July 2007 throughForest Service contracting. Species sites are being

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revisited and up to 100 acres in the immediate areais being surveyed for the target species and allother sensitive and strategic fungal species. At thispoint, the focus is in western Oregon. We had quitea time trying to map some of these old sites withlittle location information. Unfortunately, therewere many species and sites we would like to haveincluded in this contract, but could not due to lackof accurate location information, which is whythere are no Washington site revisits. With thiscontract we will be gathering more habitat anddistribution information through sporocarp surveys.

3. Herbaria specimens: In the early years ofthe Northwest Forest Plan Survey & Managemitigation program, local herbaria and mycologicalliterature were searched for site information, but itwas not done for the Ramaria, nor for areas ofOregon and Washington outside the NorthwestForest Plan. We are having more than 650 Ramariacollections from the University of Washingtonherbarium at the Burke Museum re-identified byEfren Cazares under a BLM Fungi Identificationcontract. Many of these collections lack accuratelocation information, but we'll at least find outwhat vicinities certain species occur in.

4. Field Guides: There are notoriously fewmushroom field guides. For many years Ron Exeterfrom Salem BLM had been working on a fieldguide for Ramaria. It was just published lastNovember as a government publication. Orderf o r m s a r e a v a i l a b l e a th t t p : / / w w w . f s . f ed . u s / r 6 / s f p n w / i ssssp /inventories/field-guides.shtml. In addition, Ron isworking on a field guide for Phaeocollybia withLorelei Norvell who did her PhD work onPhaeocollybia.

5. Conservation Assessment: AConservation Assessment for a number of thespecial status and sensitive fungal species wasrecently completed and is available on the ISSSSPw e b p a g e ( h t t p : //www.fs.fed.us/r6/sfpnw/issssp/planning-documents/assessments.shtml). It includes allhabitat information that could be gleaned fromeach species' site data.

6. Fungi Effects Analysis Guidelines: Theseguidelines have been available for several years

( http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/sfpnw/issssp/planning-tools/). The annotated bibliography is being updated.

7. Habitat Spreadsheet: What habitat most ofour sensitive fungal species occurs in is unknown. Acurrent effort is underway to pull together habitatinformation for each species into a spreadsheet formatfor easy use by agency field botanists. It will be postedon the ISSSSP web site when completed.

8. Habitat Modeling for 6 Fungal Species:Richard Helliwell and Dana York from the UmpquaNational Forest mapped habitat for 6 species usingBioMapper. Their report is currently in draft form,and they are looking into the possibility of publishingtheir work.

9. Identification Services: We have aregional Fungal Identification IDIQ contract to havespecimens collected by the FS and BLM botanistsverified by experts. Though fungi surveys areconsidered impractical for pre-project work, if FSand BLM botanists do run across a mushroom theythink keys out to one our sensitive or strategicspecies, they are asked to please send it to the FSRegional Office/BLM State Office so it can besubmitted to the appropriate contracted expert forverification. All fungi, lichens, bryophytes, andmollusks are required by R6 FS and OR/WA BLMto be vouchered and submitted to the RegionalOffice/State Office for expert identification. The requirement memo, vouchering instructions, andmore information are athttp://www.fs.fed.us/r6/sfpnw/issssp/inventories/identification.shtml

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10. Brigeoporus nobilissimus (BRNO): AnISSSSP work group met regarding BRNO lastwinter. We've already begun high priority tasksincluding creating a species fact sheet ( http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/sfpnw/issssp/planning-documents/) and having an informal test conductedof whether or not DNA BRNO occurs in the soilnear a stump with a BRNO conk to begin testingwhether the mycelium are in the soil are strictly intree trunks or even just near the tree roots. MattGordon of Molecular Solutions did the work. Hefound the BRNO DNA was only in a couple of soilsamples near the tree where fine roots may havebeen.

11. Fungi DNA Barcoding: In 2005 we hada small contract to have collections of all thespecial status and sensitive fungal species at theOregon State University Herbarium sampled andtheir DNA archived. We're now continuing thatwork by having the archived DNA sequenced onthe main loci used for fungi barcoding, the ITSregion. There's some fascinating work happeningto identify fungi and other organisms from theirDNA. It's especially relevant for fungi since theyare mostly invisible to us except when they fruit.You can find out more from several websites: 1) www.allfungi.org 2) www.bolnet.ca 3)http://unite.ut.ee 4) http://aftol.org

Our goal is to add our PNW rare fungispecies to GenBank ( www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)where they will be available to the public forfurther research and for species-specific markers toeventually be developed.

PisolithustinctoriusDead Man’sFootat the base of atombstone

CMS Board meetings are generally held on thefirst Thursday of the month in the home of aBoard member. Chris Melotti (746-7548) to learnthe time and place for meetings.Officers:President: Dean JohnstonVice President: Michele PakSecretary: Matthew JohnsonTreasurer: Chris MelottiMembers at large: Joe Spivack

Meredith AllenGrace PughSeth MillerMichelle PakDave ThomasTrudy Nelson

Newsletter editor: Matthew JohnsonForay Coordinator: Grace PughWebsite: Seth MillerMembership Chair: Cheshire Mayrsohn

This is the newsletter of Cascade MycologicalSociety. It is published four or five times a year, on amycologically oriented schedule so expect them inlate summer, fall, winter and spring. PLEASE send articles, poems, drawings,announcements and corrections to Matthew Johnsonat intrepids2003@yahoo.com CMS is a non-profit under 501(c)(3). Donationsare tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed underthe law.E- Mail Lists

CMS sends out meeting, event and forayreminders via e-mail, if you are not getting these andwish to be on the e-mail list, please send an e-mail tocheshire@efn.org, saying in the subject line "add toCMS e-mail" and you'll be put on the e-mail list. CMSdoes not share its e-mail or mailinglist with any other groups or organizations andmessages are sent out "blind copy".

If you have any questions about yourmembership, contact Cheshire Mayrsohn atcheshire@efn.org or 689-8189.

Don’t forget to check out our website:cascademyco.org. And log on to the FORUM to findout what’s the latest on who’s finding what andwhere.

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Cascade Mycological Society www.cascademyco.org1275 Sunnyside DriveEugene, Oregon 97404

Mail completed form and check/money order to: Cascade Mycological SocietyP. O. Box 110Eugene, OR 97440www.cascademyco.org

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