Hi Gang,
 What a great weekend on the Mendocino Coast. Despite the various
prognosticators of gloom and doom, our little band of enthusiastic field
mycologists, 72 strong, managed to pull in over 215 fungal species, several
quite rare and one perhaps making its first appearance here on the west coast of
North America! 
 
Every single club in California was represented at this foray, as well as the
probable nucleus of a brand new mycology club in the Mt. Shasta area, after one
attendee was inspired by this foray. An original Shasta club started there
around the time of the first ACCF in 2005, but they had since disbanded. Glad to
see another person picking up the mycology banner!
 
Best of all, and despite an abundance of our holy trinity of winter edibles
(hedgies and blacks and yellowfeet, oh my!) the true focus for the vast majority
of attendees was the incredible diversity of fungi found in the Mendocino area.
Our little lab was packed day and night with folks eager to learn more. Scopes
were lined up along one wall, and many people took advantage of their presence
to get deeper into their taxonomy. Special thanks to Phil Carpenter and Henry
Young of the FFSC for contributing their club scopes, and to Peter Werner for
bringing some of his Microscopy Club scopes to our event...that Leica dissecting
scope was a dream, and the fungi beneath its magnification were beautifully
surrreal. I know for a fact that it changed the outlook of one former edibles
only mushroom hunter from NYC! ;)
 
We couldn't drag folks outta the lab, and there was a happy buzz of intellect
and discovery 'til long after midnight...
 
Oluna Ceska put on a wonderful talk about the importance of mushroom microscopy,
and showed many slide examples, some of which were also present in our lab for a
bit of real-time review after her talk. One of the coolest under the scope was
Hemimycena tortuosa, with its corkscrew cystidia.
 
The Brat Pack and Doug Smith lined another wall, computers at the ready, going
deep for their IDs and putting up mushrooms on Mushroom Observer. Henry Young
and Phil Carpenter made sure that all named species were accounted for, after
taking part in the naming themselves. Big thanks to Phil and Henry as well as
Mendocino local Ryane Snow, who all led huge forays of eager ACCF attendees into
Jackson State Forest, without losing a soul.
 
Kim Travers and Hildegard Hendrickson from the PSMS in Seattle had fun geeking
out with taxonomy. Karen Rusiniak from the MSSF couldn't tear herself away from
the scope. A plant ecologist retired to California after decades in Glacier NP,
and who had first learned about mycology at Duke, and wanted to brush up on the
new names and myco-theories, was encouraged to come to ACCF by a former student,
who flew in himself from Washington, DC to attend! A very pleasant and
enthusiastic professor and nationally known author from NYC, a self-taught
mushroomer, also attended, and marvelled at the diversity of fungi that were not
restricted to just edible species.  
 
Hey, what've I been tellin' ya all along??! It's an amazing world of fungi out
there!!!!
 
Christian Swarz did a nice write-up of the foray for the BAMS website here:
 
http://www.bayareamushrooms.org/forays/accf_2011.html

 
Those lovely photos are all his. He also has more ACCF photos on his Facebook
page...
 
Great foray, great folks, high energy and good vibes. Oh yeah, and the mushrooms
didn't suck either.
 
Debbie Viess
 
ps see you at the next great BAMS event: the 6th Annual Pt. Reyes Fungus Fair,
Feb. 12 (collecting and ID) and 13 (Fair). See the BAMS and Pt. Reyes websites
for more details:
 
http://bayareamushrooms.org/forays/point_reyes.html
 
http://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/events_fungusfair.htm
 

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