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News & Stories / Field Reports Albion I 2002: Species List Our members collected over 200 species at our first Albion foray of the season. Henry Young • March 1, 2002 Hypholoma fasciculare. © Damon Tighe (CC-BY-NC) (from inaturalist.org, ID 67267989) Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Albion I Foray, December 2003 Albion I Foray 2005 Species List Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / 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

News & Stories / Field Reports How Many Mushrooms in One Day? I have always wondered how many mushroom species it would be possible to see in one day in Santa Cruz County. Since this fall has been so exceptionally fruitful for mushrooms, I decided to give it a go… How else to find out? Christian Schwarz • December 26, 2014 Found on that day in 2014. © Christian Schwarz Antrodia sp. (a small, large-pored species on Santa Cruz Mtn. manzanita). © Christian Schwarz I chose this time of the year because the fall mushroom assemblage is rapidly transitioning into the winter assemblage, briefly bumping up easily-seen diversity during the period of overlap. Hunting had to be spread out over 4 days (eleven hours), but I’m quite sure that all the mushrooms I encountered could have been found on either the 18th or the 21st. I ended up with 270 species (not all identified to species, but recognizable RTUs). To find out what was found in Santa Cruz County on that day in 2014, visit my post on Tumblr: A Pseudo-Big Day in Santa Cruz , Notes of a Mycophile Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Citizen Science - Amateur Ain't a Dirty Word Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / NAMA Foray Kudos The North American Mycolocigal Association foray held in Scotts Valley in December was a resounding success. Wendy Wells • January 1, 2013 Photo by Hugh Smith The Mission Springs facility worked out wonderfully. The event was sponsored by NAMA under the aegis of ace Santa Cruz organizers Noah Seigel and Christian Schwarz. Their abundant energy, organizational skills and good cheer made for an educational and memorable foray. Thanks also to lead foray mycologist Else Vellinga and the many organizers and presenters who helped make it all possible! The recent rains produced bountiful collections that kept the ID and vouchering process busy all weekend. Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

Clathrus ruber. Photo by Anne Elvin Clathrus ruber Anne Elvin "It is nice to know that although my family is not quite excited about mushrooms as I am; I have made a difference where when they see an interesting fungus, they let me know. Texted to me from a Palo Alto Elementary School."--Kitty Clathrus ruber , Wikipedia Camera Phone Focal L. Aperture Shutter Sp. ISO Flash Photo taken on November 1, 2016 Mushroom(s) ... Previous Photo Back to Gallery Next Photo

News & Stories / Field Reports Echo Summit Foray Species List: September 26th 2003 I’d like to thank everyone for their help, and give special thanks to Phil Carpenter for his excellent memory. John Brown • November 1, 2003 Coprinus comatus. © Alan Rockefeller (from mushroomobserver.org) Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts 2004 Echo Summit Foray Recap Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

News & Stories / Mycology & Art News New Mushroom Identification Class As announced this spring, Phil Carpenter has assumed the duties of the Science Advisor for FFSC. One of his duties is to teach identification classes for our newer mushroom hunters who are beginning to learn the fine art of safely identifying edible and toxic mushrooms. Wendy Wells • September 1, 2009 Phil Carpenter examining a specimen Phil has changed the traditional format of the identification classes from a monthly ID class to a series of classes. He is asking interested parties to sign up much the same way that you would sign up for a class in a junior college. That is, you would sign up with the idea that you would com-mit to attend all the classes to get the most out of the course. That will be important, as each class will build upon the knowledge gained in the previous classes. Because of this format, it is not be advisable to just “drop in” on single classes. Classes will still be once a month with two sets of three classes each. The first set will be offered October, November and December. The second set will be offered February, March and April. As in the past, these classes will be held from 7-9 PM on the first Wednesday of the month at the Museum of Natural History in Santa Cruz (the “whale museum”). Therefore, the first classes will be held on October 7, November 4 and December 2 of this year. The second set will be held on February 3, March 3 and April 7 of 2010. In addition, as a culmination of the classes, a field trip (foray) will be held to apply the knowledge gained in the classes. The first foray will be held as part of the collecting effort for the Fungus Fair and will take place on Sunday, January 3, 2010. The second foray will be held on Saturday, April 24, 2010. This is a call to sign up for the classes. The class size is limited to 20 to accommodate the room at the Museum. Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Mushroom ID Classes: Fall 2013 Series Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup We have several wonderful creamy soups in our list of recipes here, and here's an especially creamy one. by Deb Boletus edulis. © dietel (CC-BY-NC) (from inaturalist.org, obs. 322510983) Method Reconstitute dried mushrooms in Madeira for 1 hour. Sauté onions in butter over low heat in a soup pot, stirring occasionally, until translucent and tender (about 15 minutes). Clean fresh mushrooms, slice thin and add to onions. Sauté until cooked (about 15 minutes). Add the drained reconstituted mushrooms to the pot, reserving the liquid (Madeira). Strain or carefully decant the reserved Madeira into the soup pot, leaving gritty residue behind. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes. Puree the solids in a food processor or blender until smooth, adding 1 cup of liquid. Combine remaining liquid, heat over medium heat and season to taste. Thin with half & half or cream if soup is too thick or if it just seems like a good idea. Bring up to temperature and serve. Recipe contributed: December 1996 Objective: Soup Total Time: About 3 hours Yield: 4 servings Suggested Mushrooms: Porcini (Boletus edulis, Boletus regineus, Boletus rex-veris) Portobello/portabella, champignon, cremini, button (Agaricus bisporus) Yellowfoot (winter chanterelle) (Craterellus tubaeformis) Join FFSC or renew your membership to access the rest of this content. Join FFSC Login as an FFSC member to access the rest of this content. Login Ingredients 2 oz. dried mushrooms* 2 lbs. fresh mushrooms* 3/4 cups Madeira wine 8 Tbs (1 Stick) butter 2 cups finely chopped onions 4 cups chicken stock** 1 pint cream or half & half Salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste A soup pot Food processor or blender * You can use cremini for the bulk of the fresh mushrooms, and then a wild dried mushroom such as yellowfoot (left whole and don't overcook) or porcini (chopped fine). ** Preferably homemade chicken stock. If you must use canned stock, go for the lower sodium version. It's far from low-sodium, but it won't render your soup inedible. Previous Recipe All Recipes Next Recipe

News & Stories / Writings Stories from the April 1, 2010 Issue of Duff Jim Maley found this awesome Craterellus Cubano on a recent foray to Havana... Rick & Ella Schwartzi • April 1, 2010 Jim Maley with a Craterellus Cubano Scientists Discover No Two Mushrooms Alike In a development that has thrown mushroom identification into a virtual tizzy, professional mycologists have discovered through a multilocus phylogenetic overview that the clades they’ve been accepting as fact are quite suspect. “We found that we were using such a small section of the DNA, we missed a lot of stuff ”, says Dr. Harry Lincough. An overview of the phylogeny of a six-gene region supermatrix reveals that two mushrooms growing side by side can look quite different. Bayesian analyses of 5611 nucleotide characters of ribosomal RNA genes recovered six major clades, which are all recognized informally and labeled as Cantharellus cascadensis . “Sometimes it’s chrome yellow; sometimes it’s lemon yellow,” says mushroom expert I. Buyzalot. “ Cantharellus cascadensis is genetically very similar to Cantharellus subalbidus . When Cantharellus cascadensis is completely covered with duff, it is all white. Who can tell them apart, really, when acidification is a possible cause of fading?” adds Buyzalot. This debate will go on for some time, experts in the field have boldly predicted. “We don’t know for sure if they’re hybridizing or cross-breeding, but we can’t tell one from another,” says Dr. Lincough. “There is no happy ending.” Next month : Care and breeding of Cornish game hens. Fungus Federation Opens New Office Thanks to a generous grant from the FourOne Foundation, FFSC has opened an office in the Costco Santa Cruz. “We’re here every day anyway, buying supplies for some club event, so why not just make it an official place for Fungus Federators to come visit while we’re shopping,” says Debbie Johnson. Dried wild mushrooms, $10 per bag, benefits the FFSC In addition to a great way to recruit new members, the FFSC office has other benefits. “We can sell mushrooms that people collect on commission, and 10% of sales benefit the club treasury,” says Minister of Stores Toni Gillespie. “We’ve even started a line of dried mushrooms, which is quite popular.” According to CEO Bob Sellers, staffing is no problem since there’s almost always an FFSC member in Costco. “The new office has been very successful,” says Sellers. “Come see us soon.” Get Certified in Mushroom ID Groceries and farmers markets all over California are gearing up for a new program to have staff-certified mushroom identifiers on site beginning in 2011. No more messy poisonings: trained identifiers will be available to give a thumbs up or finger down the throat for novice mushroom collectors everywhere. Learn the difference between “Edibles,” the “Lose your lunch bunch” and “Call 911 NOW” types of fungi. Promotional ad for this venerable program Looflirpa College is offering Master Identifier certificate classes starting in June. Their knowledgeable, high-powered instructors, Dr. Henry Gnuoy and Dr. Philip Retneprac, have years of experience in this exacting yet profitable field. To take advantage of this exciting opportunity, sign up today and get a jump start on your next career! No prior training required. Looflirpa College is an equal opportunity institution. We’re an accredited university offering on-campus and online college degree programs. Visit us at www.looflirpa.edu. New Species from Lockheed Fire Area These pics just in from the Lockheed Fire Area. This new species is being named Californicus gigantorel . Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Stories from the April 1, 2011 Issue of Duff Writings Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

Chicken with Olives, Caramelized Onions, and Sage Marje Young’s chicken dinner was wildly successful at one of our Echo Summit forays, with many people clamoring for the recipe. by Marje Young Red onions (stock photo) Method Season the chicken: Coat chicken with spices and let rest. Sauté the white onions in oil until golden (about 30 min). Add honey and sauté another 15 minutes until browned. Spread in bottom of baking pan large enough to hold chicken in a single layer. Brown the chicken (use the same frying pan) and place on top of the browned white onions. Put the sautéed red onions on top of the chicken. Deglaze frying pan with 1⁄2 cup white wine until bubbling stops. Add remaining wine. Boil about 9 minutes or until liquid is reduced to 2 cups. Pour into baking pan around chicken. Tuck sage, garlic cloves and bay leaves around chicken. Sprinkle with pepper. Taste sauce and adjust (I find I often need a bit more honey depending on acidity of the wine). Cover pan tightly and bake chicken 30 minutes. Sprinkle olives over top of chicken making sure some of the olives get some down into the sauce. Bake uncovered until chicken is tender, basting once or twice. Recipe contributed: October 2010 This is a chicken dish, but of course you can also add your own mushrooms! At our Echo Summit foray, this dish was served with green beans with caramelized boletes, quinoa cooked with vegetables, and sautéed kale. We put some of the chicken sauce over the quinoa. A delicious combination! Objective: Complementary Total Time: 2.5 to 3 hours Yield: 8 servings Suggested Mushrooms: Without mushrooms (non applicabilis, sine fungis) Join FFSC or renew your membership to access the rest of this content. Join FFSC Login as an FFSC member to access the rest of this content. Login Ingredients Seasoned Chicken Eight chicken thighs 2 tsp. ground cumin 2 tsp. salt 2 tsp. sweet paprika 1 tsp. turmeric 1/3 cup olive oil White Onions 1 1⁄4 pounds white onions 1 1⁄2 tbs. honey Red Onions 1/3 cup olive oil 1 1⁄4 pounds red onions Sauté red onions until golden and set aside Wine Sauce 1 bottle white wine 9 or more sage leaves 8 or more garlic cloves 3-5 bay leaves Previous Recipe All Recipes Next Recipe

News & Stories / My Mushroom Obsession: The First Thirty Days of a New Life A month in the life of a newly minted fungiphile... Marsha Griggs Adlong (CMS) • March 1, 2001 Boletus rubriceps (ruby porcini). © Damon Tighe (CC-BY-NC) (from inaturalist.org, obs. 21274974) Members Only Content Login Join FFSC Related Posts Previous Article All News & Stories Next Article

Russian Vegetable Pie Helene served this savory and rich double-crust pie at one of our Holiday Potlucks. by Helene Greenwood Agaricus bisporus. © wesawthis (CC-BY-NC) (from inaturalist.org, obs. 102438940) Method Pastry Sift together the dry ingredients. Cut in 3 Tbs. butter and 4 oz. softened cream cheese, and work it together into the dough. Roll out 2/3 of the pastry, and line a 9" pie dish. Roll out the remaining pastry, and make a circle larger enough to cover the dish. Chill. Filling Shred the cabbage coarsely. Slice the mushrooms. Peel and chop the onion. Melt about 2 Tbsp. of butter in a large skillet, add onion, and allow the onion to change color, becoming transparent. Add the cabbage and allow to wilt. Add herbs and spices, except the dill. Remove from skillet and set aside. Add another Tbsp. of butter to the pan and briefly sauté the mushrooms. (Some people prefer to leave store-bought Agaricus bisporus raw, and allow it to cook in the pie. Others sauté the mushrooms first to prevent the bottom crust from becoming soggy). Bake the Pie Preheat oven to 400°F. Spread 4 oz. softened cream cheese over the bottom of the pie shell. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and arrange the slices in a layer over the cream cheese. Sprinkle generously with chopped fresh dill (less generously if using dried dill). Cover with the cabbage mixture. Divide the mushrooms over the cabbage. Cover the whole pie with the circle of pastry. Press pastry tightly together at the edges and flute. Slash the top in a few places. Bake at 400°F for 15 minutes. Turn the temp down to 350° and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes or until the crust is light brown. Recipe contributed: March 1991 Objective: Main course Total Time: About 2 hours Yield: 6 to 8 servings Suggested Mushrooms: Porcini (Boletus edulis, Boletus regineus, Boletus rex-veris) Portobello/portabella, champignon, cremini, button (Agaricus bisporus) Join FFSC or renew your membership to access the rest of this content. Join FFSC Login as an FFSC member to access the rest of this content. Login Ingredients Pastry 1 1/4 (5/4) Cups flour* 1 tsp. sugar 1 tsp. salt 4 oz. softened cream cheese 3 Tbsp. butter Filling 1 small head of cabbage - about 3 Cups shredded 1/2 lb. mushrooms** ( or more) 1 yellow onion 3 Tbsp. butter 4 oz. softened cream cheese 4 to 5 hard-cooked eggs Dill, fresh if available 1/2 tsp. each of basil, marjoram, tarragon(optional) Salt and freshly ground black pepper 9" pie dish * If you like a thicker crust, use 2 cups flour, and increase the butter or cheese (or both) accordingly. People usually use Agaricus bisporus for this pie, because they hold their texture well during the baking process, and the flavor blends easily with the cabbage. That said, some people use Porcini or other mushrooms for a stronger flavor. Previous Recipe All Recipes Next Recipe