Mushrooms in the Time of Coronavirus

For many of us the last couple of months have been a time of less - less income, less human interaction, less time in nature, and fewer opportunities to collect and study fungi. A house-bound, stir-crazy New Yorker I particularly missed the weekly rain-or-shine walks, lively ID sessions and lectures of my local club, the New York Mycological Society. 

My gloom was lifted by an email from our president, Tom Bigelow in which he shared a thoughtfully-curated list of videos, articles and activities with which to pass the quarantine. After all, for some of us one all-too-scarce commodity - time - has suddenly become more than plentiful. Short of retirement, when do we ever get the chance to really study mycology in depth? There are so many brilliant free resources already out there, waiting to be explored. 

April and May have turned into a semester of mycology home study for me, helping me stay sane and distracting me from the craziness of the world. To help others do the same, I’ve created a mega resource list (based on Tom’s) of articles, videos, books, keys, databases and social media resources that cover a wide variety of fungi-related topics. But it’s far from perfect - it reflects my peculiar biases and blind spots and is thin in many areas. That’s why I’ve made it an interactive Google document. I would love it if others added their own favorite resources, so we can all learn together and come out of this epidemic a little bit more knowledgeable and inspired:  https://bit.ly/36fufKY