Announcing CMS Interest Groups

Do you have a specific mycological interest? We all love going out to forage for wild mushrooms, but there are other ways to experience fungi.  The CMS Board would like to encourage the formation of Interest groups.  These would be subsets of CMS members that get together informally on their own schedule (monthly, quarterly, your choice) and plan their own activities.  You can meet in someones home, a pub, or a public meeting location like a park. Or, if you have no interesting in meeting, just plan outings or events via email, a Facebook group, or other online methods. If an Interest Group would like to plan an activity that involves the entire membership, the CMS Board would certainly support that. If you have a project and need funding, present it to the CMS Board. But, whatever you do, it is all up to you. Here are some ideas of some interest groups and the types of activities they may be fun to pursue:

  • Culinary – Exchange mushroom recipes, meet in homes for mushroom dinners, plan an outing to The Joel Palmer House (pricey but fabulous mushroom dinners).
  • Photography – Share ideas on taking photos of fungi, go on outings to photograph fungi, organize a fungi photograph contest or display, invite a professional photographer to help improve your skills.
  • Fungi Crafts – Learn mushroom crafts (clay mushrooms, dying with mushrooms, felted mushrooms, knitting mushroom hats), plan a mushroom painting outing to Vino and Vango, make mushroom costumes for the Mushroom Festival.
  • Cultivation –  Learn and share information about how to cultivate mushrooms in your garden, via growing kits, on logs. etc. Visit mushroom cultivation farms, partner with The School Garden Project to incorporate mushroom cultivation into school gardens.
  • Education – Gather information and organize fungi education for the community and local schools. Provide Fungi Educational displays at community events.
  • Taxonomy – Calling all “Fungi Nerds”, if you are one, you know that is a compliment.  Get together to learn about and study fungi in detail, sponsor microscopy classes or outings to herbariums.   Organize the preservation of mushrooms collected for the Mushroom festival into an herbarium.

To get involved – go to the new CMS Interest Groups Page.