News & Stories / November 2009 Local Foray On Saturday, 22 November, the Fungus Federation held a local foray. Because Sunset Magazine featured FFSC in it’s November issue and publicized the foray, a larger than usual group was expected and realized. Margaret Carpenter • December 1, 2009 Talk at the Nov 2009 Local Foray. Photo by Margaret Carpenter Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts 2015 January Local Foray Wrap Up 2016 February Local Foray Field Report Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Field Reports 2013 Sierra Scouting Report Last weekend I drove up Hwy 50 looking for Porcini. At Wrights lake, I found one buggy Bolete and several cuttings. A forest service employee who lives there told me they had a thunderstorm 3 weeks earlier - nothing since. Mark Gillespie • September 12, 2013 Porcini (bolete) (from a Spring foray) Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts 2016 March Sierra Report Field Reports Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Spring Fungi of the Sierra Nevada, June 2013 Dr. Dennis Desjardin will introduce students to the different kinds of mushrooms and other large fungi that occur in the spring in the Sierra Nevada. Marje Young • May 1, 2013 Morel, the Magnificent Morel (2013). Photo by Hugh Smith Emphasis will be placed on the analysis of macro – and micromorphological features, as well as ecological roles, to aid in the identification of taxa. The daily class routine consists of an 8:00-10:00 am lecture followed by a field trip until approx. 3:00 pm. Transportation on the field trips will be by car pooling. Upon return to the camp, collections will be examined and identified in the laboratory (3:30-6:00 pm) in collaboration with the instructor and a knowledgeable graduate student assistant. All equipment, microscope slides, cover slips and reagents required for accurate determination of specimens will be provided. In the evenings, several lectures and slide shows will be presented, and the laboratory will be open for additional work on collections. If sufficient quantities of edible fungi are collected, they will be prepared for consumption and served to the class by the camp’s chef. Class Schedule: Participants should plan to arrive Sunday afternoon in time to attend an orientation lecture on Sunday evening at 8:00 pm. The last class meeting ends at noon on Friday. Tuition: $348 Accommodation (additional fee) details : http://www.sfsu.edu/~sierra/Accommodations.html Details and registration information can be found online at http://www.sfsu.edu/~sierra/Course_Fungi.html Dues-paying FFSC members interested in an FFSC Scholarship to help fund your attendance should contact Marje Young. Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Spring Fungi of the Sierra Nevada, 2014 Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Mycology & Art News Bedbugs Banished by Beauveria Bassiana Just when those creepy little bloodsuckers seemed to become resistant to all pest control options, in comes the mycological equivalent of Buffy the vampire slayer, Nina Jenkins and colleague Matthew Thomas. Cortinarius • May 12, 2014 Grasshoppers killed by B. bassiana (on wikimedia.org) In truth, the real heroine is an arthropod-killing fungus, Beauveria bassiana . Jenkins and her team are pursuing research and development on a new bio-pesticide utilizing powdered fungal spores of B. bassiana. Initial bioassays show promise. Invading bedbugs marching through the dust appear to be highly susceptible, going belly-up within 6 days. Although this is a novel approach to bed bug infestations, B. bassiana is already in use as a bio-pesticide for termites, thrips, whiteflies, aphids and some beetles. Nina Jenkins is working at Penn State in the Thomas Lab where her work centers on the development of bio-pesticides derived from fungi. Development includes strategies for mass production of fungal conidia, its enhancement and long term stability. For more, visit [a copy of] the original article: https://web.archive.org/web/20140926020643/http://www.huck.psu.edu/about/news-archive/thomas-bedbug-control/ Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Microscopy of Gilled Mushrooms Could a Stropharia Filter E. Coli Bacteria From Drinking Water? Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Taylor Lockwood's National Geographic Magazine Debut Dear friends -- In the past twenty-five years or so I have been sending major publications some of my best images in hopes of getting them to see mushrooms as nature's art instead of dried up moldy pieces of science. That's o.k. too but I'm going for nature's beauty here. Taylor Lockwood • February 12, 2014 Bioluminescent mushrooms. © Taylor Lockwood It has been very frustrating and I've written letters detailing my thoughts about their aesthetic fungophobia -- but I didn't send them. I decided to take the high road and keep photographing and sending images until there was one to which they could not say "no". My persistence has paid off. In the May, 2014 issue, in their front section, Visions of Earth, National Geographic Magazine is going to feature one of my mushroom photos in a two page spread. To their credit, they picked one of the best mushroom photos of my career -- bioluminescent mushrooms with no other light than from the light of the moon. That image (above) and many more will be in this year's "Spirits of the Forest" tour in the fall. This is a great day for mushrooms. And, to the many people who have bought my "mushroom items", booked shows, given advice, helped with editing and identifications, provided hospitality as well as other support, this is not just my success; it is your success too. This is not a time to "rest upon laurels". I feel even more charged than before. To that end, I'll be going to Brazil again this Friday and Australia/New Zealand next month. I hope to see you on the "Spirits of the Forest" tour in the fall, Taylor Editor's Note: As of 2026, a photo of the 2-page spread is available in the National Geographic Photographic archive channel (@geoarchive_) on Instagram. Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Cam Cam by Taylor Lockwood Bioluminescent Mushrooms from Spirits of the Forest Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Field Reports Adventures in Austria This summer I was fortunate to have the opportunity to join a group of 4 other people to accompany Daniel Winkler on one of his MushRoaming tours. Phil Carpenter • October 16, 2015 Phil with a patch of chanterelles in Austria (2015) If you are unaware of this company, Daniel leads multiple mycological eco-tours to many areas of the world. Check out his website at mushroaming.com . This summer was the first time he organized a trip to his homeland, Munich, Germany. Daniel's family owns a 300+ year old farmhouse (Severenhaus) in St. Johann, a small town in the beautiful Tyrolean Alps a short drive from Munich. Growing up, he spent a lot of time there with his family and developed his interest and knowledge about mushrooms in the spruce and beech forests of the area. After meeting up with the group in Munich and doing some great sightseeing in the ancient capital of Bavaria, we loaded up the rental van and drove to St. Johann through the picturesque Tyrolean Alps. The area is well known for its many ski areas and unique wooden architecture. Our destination was Severenhaus where we were most comfortably housed. A unique feature of this very old but very sturdy building was the low doorways. The bottom of the heavy beams forming the top of the doorway was right at the middle of my forehead, and I’m not a tall person. Needless to say, there were a number of encounters with those most solid beams, especially for the taller people in the group. The Severenhaus was located outside of town at the base of the Niederkaiser, a low limestone mountain range in the shadow of the much taller and more rugged Wilderkaiser range. Of course, as soon as we unloaded our gear, we set off behind the house on our first little mushroom foray. Unfortunately, the area had just experience record high temperatures for a while before we arrived so conditions were pretty dry and few mushrooms were found. Mostly, we found some small Marasmius species. Chanterelles in the Viktualien market in Munich (2015) The next day, however, we drove to an area nearby where there were extensive sphagnum moss beds and notably more moisture. We hit the jackpot there filling our baskets with the small European chanterelles. A “big” one was maybe and inch and a half across, many being smaller. They were certainly tasty, though! Since we ate most of our meals at Severenhaus, we had them fixed in many different dishes. On those occasions when we sampled the very tasty local restaurant cuisine, there were always chanterelle dishes on the menu. They were also found in many of the local open-air markets. Dried boletes in the Viktualien market in Munich (2015) Over the next week, we alternated sight-seeing and collecting forays to various regions in the area. One day we went to Salzburg and visited Mozart’s place of birth as well as the imposing castle high on the central hill. After reaching St. Johann, we had much cooler and rainy weather which was great for the Dried boletes in the Viktualien market in Munich. We did much better towards the end of the trip and were able to put together a species list of nearly 100 species. I was very surprised to find that I was able to not only recognize the mushroom genera but also many species. Daniel had a number of field guides for the area but they were all in German. With Daniel translating and the color photographs for all the mushrooms, we were able to positively identify nearly everything we found. Daniel Winkler with a cluster of Lyophyllum decastes (fried chicken mushrooms) The trip was over much sooner than we’d have liked but we went away having seen the incredibly beautiful scenery of the area, experienced some great habitats and mushroom fruitings, had some long and exhilarating hikes in the steep local mountains, ate some delicious meals, both at restaurants and the Severenhaus, and of course, sampled quite a few of the numerous local beers. I even took the opportunity to visit the world’s oldest continuously operating brewery (Weihenstephan, brewing since 1040!) in Freising, about an hour train ride outside of Munich. I’d like to add that this trip with Daniel was very well organized, relaxed but efficient and thoroughly enjoyable. The group was friendly and of varied and interesting backgrounds. It was a real pleasure to be able to share the Winkler family house in Austria and experience the comfortable feeling of being in a home instead of a hotel. If you have a chance to join Daniel on one of his trips, I highly recommend going! Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Field Report - 2021 NAMA Foray Grandby CO Phil Carpenter receives Knighton Award at Appalachia NAMA 2023 Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Fair News A Short History of the Fungus Fair At our recent club meeting, Phil Carpenter shared how FFSC and the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair came to be. Here's a video recap of his talk! Vellany Pierce • January 6, 2014 Phil Carpenter gives a short history of FFSC and the Fungus Fair Learn more on our FFSC History page! Come and celebrate the Fair with us at Louden Nelson Center in Santa Cruz this coming weekend: January 10th, 2014: 3-7 Sat 11th, 2014: 10-5 Sun 12th, 2014: 10-5 Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Fungus Fair Sculpture at the Wharf Haikus Celebrating the Secret Life of Fungi Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

FFSC News & Stories Field reports, member stories, and mushroom-related news, from newest to oldest. (Visit FFSC Events for upcoming club activities.) Cookeina tricholoma (Mont.) Kuntze (2014, Yukatan). Photo by Yev Nyden More Finds Featured Fungi Mushroom Photos Recipes Events of 19 pages Go Go Go Go Go More Finds Featured Fungi Mushroom Photos Events Recipes Fair News FFSC News July 7, 2026 Santa Cruz Fungus Fair Logo Design Contest 2027 It's that time again! Submit your entries for the 2027 Santa Cruz Fungus Fair logo design contest by 10pm on August 31, 2026. The Grand Prize is $500 plus other perks! Category Writings FFSC News July 3, 2026 Earth Stars — Astreas Hygrometricus I went to Yuba County to hunt for Earth Stars. Although they are curled up and dry during the summer months, they aren’t too hard to find once you find a few older stray ones. The grass isn’t tall and it’s dry as well. Category Mycology & Art News FFSC News June 18, 2026 Spring Fungi of the Sierra Nevada - 2026 Recap Each spring, the retreat of the snowpack provides a unique ecological window of opportunity for “snowbank fungi”, a group of mushrooms that (as the name suggests) grow in and around snowbanks. As spring gives way to summer, curious mycophiles from around the world gather at a rustic campus in Tahoe National Forest to study these fascinating fungi. Category Writings FFSC News May 20, 2026 FFSC 2026 Ministers Elections-Results Welcome our new slate of FFSC ministers elected at May 19, 2026 general meeting. Category Stewardship FFSC News March 10, 2026 FFSC Bylaws 2026 Revision We are revising our club bylaws. FFSC members are encouraged to review the changes before the April 2026 members meeting. Category Fair News FFSC News January 20, 2026 2026 Santa Cruz Fungus Fair: Our Mission in Action The Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz exists to expand the understanding and appreciation of mycology through education; and to assist the public, institutions, and partner organizations in advancing that goal--and keeping the FUN in fungi. The 2026 Santa Cruz Fungus Fair brought all of these groups together to make high-quality mycological education accessible to thousands of people, while producing real scientific output and supporting local arts, culture and economic development. Category of 19 pages Go Go Go Go Go Filter by Category Fair News Field Reports Mycology & Art News Stewardship Writings Reset

Learn about mushrooms, both deadly and delicious, at the 2026 Santa Cruz Fungus Fair, brought to you by the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. View hundreds of regional species, have your mushroom finds identified, and explore the secrets of the fungal kingdom. Mushrooms fascinate us! They're ubiquitous and mysterious, delicious and sometimes deadly. They're among the oldest living things on earth. Excited to learn more? You might be a fungiphile! Learn About Fungi Explore the World of Fungi Join us as we hunt mushrooms for scientific interest and for the table. Learn to create art with fungi. Spend time outdoors and share your fungi finds with friends! Explore All Events We Keep the "fun" in fungus! Our mission is to foster and expand the understanding and appreciation of mycology among our members and the general public. And to always keep the “fun” in fungus! Why Join FFSC? Previous Next Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz "An eating and drinking club with a mushroom problem" -- Henry Young January 9-11, 2026 Santa Cruz, CA Thanks for visiting! Fungus Fair Fungus Fair Fungus Fair Fungus Fair The 2026 Santa Cruz Upcoming FFSC Events August 29, 2026 at 3:00 PM – September 6, 2026 at 11:00 AM Alaska Long-Distance Foray, September 2026 Save the date for our fantastic journey in Alaska! Explore the Alaskan Kenai peninsula and be amazed by the wildlife, fjords, glaciers and of course mushrooms. September 15, 2026, 6:00 – 9:00 PM September Speaker | Liv Fragiacomo : Organic Strawberries - Bio Alternatives to Plastic Join us for our first monthly speaker of the 2026-2027 season! October 20, 2026, 6:00 – 9:00 PM October Speaker | Save the Date : Details TBD Check back at the beginning of the season to learn about our October monthly speaker. Explore All Events Recent News & Stories More Articles Santa Cruz Fungus Fair Committee July 7, 2026 at 7:46:30 PM Santa Cruz Fungus Fair Logo Design Contest 2027 It's that time again! Submit your entries for the 2027 Santa Cruz Fungus Fair logo design contest by 10pm on August 31, 2026. The Grand Prize is $500 plus other perks! Pinned to top Hugh Smith July 3, 2026 at 4:45:00 PM Earth Stars — Astreas Hygrometricus I went to Yuba County to hunt for Earth Stars. Although they are curled up and dry during the summer months, they aren’t too hard to find once you find a few older stray ones. The grass isn’t tall and it’s dry as well. Pinned to top Lisa Tesler June 18, 2026 at 9:13:00 PM Spring Fungi of the Sierra Nevada - 2026 Recap Each spring, the retreat of the snowpack provides a unique ecological window of opportunity for “snowbank fungi”, a group of mushrooms that (as the name suggests) grow in and around snowbanks. As spring gives way to summer, curious mycophiles from around the world gather at a rustic campus in Tahoe National Forest to study these fascinating fungi. Pinned to top Follow @scfungusfed on Instagram

News & Stories / Field Reports Field Report on January 2015 Local Foray We had a great foray last Saturday on our foray! A big thanks to the all the great folks who participated! Cass Fuentes • January 5, 2015 Craterellus cornucopioides (from another foray). Photo by Hugh Smith Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts 2015 January Local Foray Wrap Up Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / 40th Fungus Fair: Time lapse of the Island setup Have you ever wondered what it takes to create the famous "Fungi Forest" each year at the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair? Yevgeny Nyden • January 10, 2014 Setting up the island for the 40th Fungus Fair Check out this time lapse video (7 hours condensed into 2 minutes!) of the Island setup for the 2014 Fungus Fair. Now we're just waiting for volunteers to bring in the mushrooms they've found! Wow, that team works fast! Here's general information about the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair. Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts A Short History of the Fungus Fair Fungus Fair Sculpture at the Wharf Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Mycology & Art News Will Mushrooms Make Styrofoam Obsolete? The May 2013 issue of New Yorker magazine had an article by Ian Frazier about a mycelium-based packaging material destined to make styrofoam packaging obsolete. Here's a shorter recap of the story, focusing on some interesting mycological details. Shea Moss • September 29, 2013 Mycelium Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer, two students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, grow all-natural substitutes for plastic from chitin molecules found in polypores. McIntyre and Bayer were taking a class from Professor Burt Swersey called Inventor’s Studio. When McIntyre and Bayer took the class in the fall term of their senior year, neither came up with anything very workable at first. Gavin’s idea for a car-exhaust attachment that would burn off emissions with charged plasma was ingenious but probably unsafe. “Like driving around with a lightning bolt in your tailpipe.” Eben’s idea for a no-moving parts turbine that could generate electricity in high winds by means of sound did not impress Swersey at all. Toward the end of their first semester, Eben thought of a previous R.P.I. class, in which he had been given the problem of making insulation panels out of a mineral called perlite. The difficulty with perlite is that it’s loose, like handfuls of popped popcorn, and tends to settle. Eben, who is the product of a one room schoolhouse in rural Vermont, grew up helping his Dad, a maple sugar farmer, on a one hundred forty acre sugarbush farm. Ranks of maple trees rise on the rocky hillsides above the farm. In the spring they would tap thousands of the best trees and connect them to a vat in the sugarhouse by PVC tubes along the steep ground. Father and son built a complicated wood chip burner to process the syrup in the sugar shack, without burning the roof down. One of Eben’s chores was to move the wood chips to the burner from on open bunker made of telephone poles and chicken wire. Though covered with a tarp, the pile of chips sometimes got wet and sprouted mushrooms. Eben noticed how the fine white fabric of their mycelium sometimes grew through the pile so tenaciously that big bunches of chips stuck together in a single clump. Eben ordered a grow-it-yourself mushroom kit while he was home during a break. He took the mushroom spores the kit contained, combined them with water and nutrients in a glass jar, added some perlite, and put the jar in the basement. When he checked a few days later, the jar held a solid white disk of perlite knit together by mycelium strands. With not much else to show for the semester of Inventor’s Studio, Eben brought the perlite disk to class. “He takes this thing out of his pocket,” Swersey recalled, “and it’s white, this amazing piece of insulation that had been grown, without hydrocarbons, with almost no energy used. The stuff could be made with almost any waste materials — rice husks, cotton wastes, stuff farmers throw away, stuff they have no market for — and it wouldn’t take away from anybody’s food supply, and it could be made anywhere from local materials, so you could cut down on transportation costs. And it would be completely biodegradable! What more could you want?” Gavin and Eben worked together for the next year trying all kinds of substrates and heating methods. Twice, they almost burned the lab at school down. They tried lint from clothes dryers, Jell-o, lobster shells, even hair. (“If it worked we were going to call the product Hairsulate.”) Instead of hunting for venture capital, Eben and Gavin financed their company by winning grants and competitions. They were still proceeding in the Edisonian hit or miss style, when Sue Van Hook, a senior teaching associate in biology and natural sciences at Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, read an article in the local Albany Times Union. When studying for her degree in botany at Humboldt State University in California, she took a course in mycology and was smitten. She wrote her graduate thesis on macrofungi and has been studying mushrooms in the field and under microscopes ever since. After eighteen years of teaching at Skidmore, she saw something that changed her life. She called Eben and talked with him for two hours. She asked Gavin if he knew anything about mushrooms. Neither knew much. She asked, “Can we get married?” (In the fungal sense, I presume). Van Hook went on wide-ranging mushroom hunts collecting new species for the company’s archives. At Skidmore’s bio labs, she and her students spent hours cataloguing the finds and recording their characteristics. The most useful mycelium came from a group of polypores. The mycelium of polypores has very strong hyphae. These hyphae can knit a molded piece of substrate solidly together. A single cubic inch of substrate can contain as much as eight miles of mycelium. Bayer and McIntyre’s invention creates natural substances that imitate plastics. The packaging material made by their factory takes a substrate of agricultural waste, steam pasturizes it, adds trace nutrients and a small amount of water, injects the mixture with pellets of mycelium, puts it in a mold shaped like a piece of packing that protects a product during shipping, and sets the mold on a rack in the dark. Four days later the mycelium has grown throughout the substrate into the shape of the mold, producing a material almost indistinguishable from Styrofoam in form, function, and cost. An application of heat kills the mycelium and stops the growth. When broken up and thrown into a compost pile, the packing material biodegrades in about a month. Van Hook retired from Skidmore to work full time with Eben and Gavin at their company, which they call Evocative . She gives lectures to prospective clients and investors where she projects on screen the molecular structures of chlorophyll, starch, glucose, cellulose, lignin, and chitin. “These are the molecules that nature builds with. For us to have a sustainable planet, we must design and build with these.” The air nearby Evocative often smells of cream of mushroom soup! In a corner of the building a sealed-off space called the Dirty Room receives the agricultural wastes and other substrate materials when they come in. Big white nylon bags filled with chopped up cornstalks, husks, crushed remains of cotton plants, barley hulls, peanut hulls, buckwheat hulls, milo hulls, hemp pith, rice husks, wheat straw and ground up old blue denim. At a conference, Gavin held up a block about the size of half a stick of butter, lighter than balsa, but as hard as pine, a piece of solid mycelium pure chitin that had been grown from nutrients and without any substrate. He said it had possible applications for aeronautics. He added that chitin is also an excellent insulator, and explained how he and his colleagues are growing electric circuits on fungal tissue made of the mycelium of household mold. In the presence of toxic materials, certain molds get around the toxicity by sequestering the metals onto their cell walls. Therefore you can put tissue taken from the mold into a copper solution and impregnate the tissue with varying amounts of copper by changing the concentration. In other words, you can make a fungal resistor that can be part of the circuitry in a computer or a cell phone. Then, instead of sending old computers and phones to be taken apart hazardously in the Third World, you can recycle them with the chitin providing nutrients for new tissue and the metals going back into a solution to be reused. In a press release dated September 24, 2013, Evocative Designs announced upcoming production of Myco Foam surfboard core material. Editor's Note: As of 2025, Evocative has gone on to release numerous mushroom-based meat alternatives, textiles, packaging materials, and construction materials. They're exploring applications in medicine and biotech, as well as computing. The original New Yorker article is now available online. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/form-and-fungus Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Algae and Fungi Team Up--and They're Lichen It... Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article