Michael Beug

Michael Beug is Professor Emeritus of The Evergreen State College and an award-winning photographer, with photographs published in over 50 books and articles. He is principal author (with Alan and Arleen Bessette) of Ascomycete Fungi of North America: A Mushroom Reference Guide. He writes about mushrooms in McIlvainea, The Mycophile, Fungi Magazine, and Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming. He created 25 PowerPoint mushroom programs available through the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) as a two-DVD set. He is a coauthor of MatchMaker, a free mushroom identification program covering 4,092 taxa with over 5,000 images of 1,984 illustrated taxa (www.matchmakermushrooms.com). He was winner of the 2006 NAMA Award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology. He is chair of the NAMA Toxicology Committee, chair the Editorial Committee and past editor of the journal McIlvainea. In the Columbia River Gorge, he currently studies the unique fungal ecosystem associated with Quercus garryana where he has found roughly 50 unnamed Cortinarius species, many unnamed Hebeloma species, new species of Russula, a new Amanita, a new Polyozellus (a blue Chanterelle), a new morel and a new Sarcomyxa as well as numerous species previously thought to be restricted to California and Southern Oregon. His hobbies are organic farming and winemaking.