We had a fabulous spring foray season and looking forward to the summer potluck. Read on to find information on edibles and see what other activities we have in store for members.
President’s Message
Is this mushroom edible?
Are there any lookalikes for this specific mushroom?
What type of environments should I focus on for foraging?
Does this mushroom provide health benefits?
If I find an edible mushroom, how is it best prepared for eating?
When I entered the world of mushrooms, I found myself asking these questions and more nearly every time I headed out to the woods. While WVMS was always my first go to resource, I discovered several online content creators dedicated to educating the public on mushroom foraging, identification, and cooking. These types of videos helped me feel more comfortable determining where to go for mushrooms and making better educated IDs in the woods. Here are some mushroom foraging channels that I recommend:
· Yellow Eleanor (https://www.youtube.com/c/YellowElanor) – based in the PNW, Yellow Eleanor dedicates all her videos to mushroom foraging – with an emphasis where to find and how to identify the more well-known edible mushrooms. Great videos for beginners and intermediates! Bonus points if you can find my cameo in one of her videos.
· Outdoor Chef Life (https://www.youtube.com/c/OutdoorChefLife) – a sushi chef by day, Taku is also an extremely capable forager. While his channel isn’t focused exclusively on mushrooms, Taku does cover numerous adventures finding and cooking chanterelles, matsutakes, lobster mushrooms, and others. I’ve found his advice on cleaning and preparing these mushrooms very beneficial!
· Learn Your Land (https://www.youtube.com/c/LearnYourLand) – this channel offers a wealth of “how to find” themed mushroom videos. He also is a great resource for learning more about the symbiotic relationship between certain trees and mushrooms. Even though these videos take place outside the PNW, I’ve still found the lessons learned beneficial to my Oregon mushroom adventures.
· Mushroom Wonderland (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbUtsAR059ZdARGicuh4RKw/about) – created by a member of the Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society, this channel focuses on edible and non-edible mushrooms of the PNW. Fairly straight forward content on how to pick, find, and identify mushrooms in our area.
Best of luck out there folks! I’m finally starting to find spring king boletes in decent numbers – our dehydrator is working overtime this spring!
WVMS Member’s Event Calendar
Announcing our first in person group potluck on August 27th! Visit our website for more details https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/foray-schedule
We will need volunteers and will send out an email as soon as we can.
Bookmark this page for WVMS Member Events! This calendar shows all of our planned virtual and in-person events for the year. https://www.wvmssalem.org/member-s-only-events
Forays
A huge thank you to Jordan Dodge, our Foray Director for making this such a memorable spring foray season.
11 WVMS club members arrived on Friday and participated in 4 scheduled forays from Friday through Sunday. Members found burn Morels a few King Boletes near the campsite. The chilly nights and warm days was the perfect weather for this trip. Saturday’s potluck dinner was well planned with Mariane’s amazing Wild Morel Risotto and a cauliflower soup enjoyed by all. It was the most awesome weekend with great mushrooms and great friends and a special appearance by Richard (and that was just the tip of the iceberg)!
If you would like to lead a foray, please contact us at salemmushroomclub@gmail.com and we will put you in touch with our Foray Director, Jordan.
Remember, you must be a member in good standing, take the Foray Safety Class https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/safety-class , and sign up on our website to join a foray. https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/foray-schedule
WVMS Summer Book Club
The Book Club is back! We are going to read The Overstory by Richard Powers. There will be a Zoom discussion on Saturday, September 24, 2022 at 6pm.
This is open to members and the general public so invite your friends!
Join Zoom Meeting
Study Group Update | WVMS FUNGA
WVMS Funga has worked through 5 Modules so far this year. We have learned to identify macro features of fungi and are now working on identifying mushrooms to Family and Genera in the field. Our class on microscopy touched on some new vocabulary and highlighted the differences between Acomycetes and Basidomycets when looking under the microscope. The board of directors approved the purchase of a club microscope, so students will soon be able to borrow the microscope for fungal microscopy.
Now that the general foray schedule is completed, we will be going on some study group forays to learn about summer fungi.
All of the classes have been recorded and we encourage other members to go watch the modules and learn something new!
You can read more about the study group here https://www.wvmssalem.org/fungi-study-groups
Check out the resources we will use here https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/studygroup-resources
We would love to hear what you are learning about. Post it to the Google Forum https://groups.google.com/g/wvms-members so we can discuss this with you or join in on a Mushroom ID Session.
Mushroom ID Sessions
The Mushroom ID Sessions have been so informative and they’re recorded for those of you who could not make it. You can find the recordings on our website under the “Education” tab https://www.wvmssalem.org/mushroom-id-sessions.
The next Mushroom ID Session will be hosted by Autumn starting in October. If you want something identified, you can email photos and a detailed description of the habitat, cap, stipe, gills, color, odor, and any bruising or staining, along with the color of the spore print or a link to your iNaturalist observation to salemmushroomclub@gmail.com.
2022 WVMS Mushroom Hunt:
We started a new iNaturalist project to invite WVMS members to join us in sharing their fungi finds. We will use these observations in our Mushroom ID sessions and further education in field ID. If you like to find mushrooms and have a smartphone, then you can participate.
Step 1: Create a FREE iNaturalist account: https://www.inaturalist.org/signup
Step 2: Join this project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wvms-mushroom-hunt
Step 3: Take good photos with your camera or smartphone and create your first observation.
Any fungi or slime mold observation you make will automatically show up in this project. It will be a great way to keep track of all of the fungi we find and, in doing so, we can all get a little better at identifying mushrooms.
If you have a smartphone you can download the app https://www.inaturalist.org/
Are you new to iNaturalist and can’t figure it out? Email salemmushroomclub@gmail.com and I will create an online zoom class to help get you set up.
Membership Director
We are so sad to see our wonderful Membership Director, Beth Lampert resign. She is such a kind and gracious leader and she will be missed. She is still part of the club, just not on the board anymore. If you see her, thank her for all of her amazing work keeping the club together through the pandemic and beyond.
We are so grateful to Mariane Pope for stepping up to fill the Membership Director position on the board. Everyone already knows Mariane from keeping the hospitality of WVMS going throughout the years and we are so happy to have her welcoming our new members.
We do need to fill the hospitality committee chair position. If you are interested in getting more involved with WVMS, please let the board know.
Contacts
Website: www.wvmssalem.org
Email: salemmushroomclub@gmail.com
Board Members: President- Patrick Heiman, Vice President- Autumn Anglin, Treasurer- Joe Harchanko, Membership Director- Mariane Pope, Secretary- Diane Highberger, Foray Coordinator- Jordan Dodge, Minister of Propaganda- John Marikos