Latest Blog Post

The smell of Russian leather! That is how the rather plain looking white “Hygrocybe” russocoriaceus is described and how it is supposed to be identified in the field. Indeed, the name russocoriaceus is Latin for Russian leather.

We’ve been hinting at it for a while and today, the day has finally come. The North American Mycoflora Project is evolving: new name, new logo and an expanded mission. Say goodbye to the North American Mycoflora Project (NAMP) and welcome Fungal Diversity Survey - FunDiS for short.

The vocabulary of mycology is one that reveals the way in which fungi have been traditionally treated in classification. Under old systems in which two kingdoms were recognized, plants and animals, fungi were assigned to the plants. The idea of fungi as plants is propagated in various ways. For example, we traditionally refer to the collection of fungi in a museum as an herbarium, when indeed they are not herbs.

In March of 2018 I and four fellow members of my local mushroom club, the Cascade Mycological Society, got together over a beer and decided it was time to step up our game. We’d been collecting and documenting the fungi of Lane County, Oregon for a long time, but beyond species lists from the annual fall mushroom show, we did not have a good idea of how many species we had, or when and where they fruited. 

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.