Your assignment this week is to practice keying out a mushroom or two before the next study session. Start with the documents below and use these pages to write your mushroom's information in your journal. Remember to add any other information like weather conditions, spore prints, and photo file names. There is not enough time to go over everyone's work individually, but please share your some of your challenges and successes.

Please post your results and a photo of the specimen to iNaturalist. Once you have posted, copy the URL and share your observations in an email to your study group. This will be a great way to discuss some interesting finds. 

This period you are going to get familiar with habitat, tree, and plant identification. Read Mushrooms Demystified, pages 34-42, and familiarize yourself with some of the coniferous and deciduous habitats. Additionally, look at this PNW native plant website, http://nativeplantspnw.com/the-native-plants/ and learn some of the characteristics of the different trees and plants on there. Our forests are primarily Douglas fir forests (Pseudotsuga menziesii), so start there and learn about those trees. 

Your final assignment is to learn more about Family classifications. In Mushrooms Demystified, read the descriptions about Morchellaceae, page 784. Also study the following descriptions about the genera Morchella, page 785, Sarcosphaera, page 825 and Boletus, page 511.

Make flash cards or a slide show of the species of fungi you have learned so far in this course. 

Optional: Purchase Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia & Alaska edited by J. Pojar and A. Mackinnon.