2018-2019 CMS Year in Review

 We began the year with 259 members and ended with 264 members.  Below, you will find that we had an action-packed year! And, we look forward to many new and fun events during our 2019/2020 season in celebration of CMS’s 20th anniversary. 

• President: Cheshire Mayrsohn
• Vice President & Meeting Speaker Coordinator: Chris Melotti
• Treasurer: Pavel Gubanikhin
• Membership Chairman: Angela Stephens
• Foray Coordinator: Matthew Johnson
• Website & Newsletter: Sandy Patton
• Members at large: Lee Yamada, Harriet Kelly.
• We began the year with Heather Sielicki as Secretary and ended the year with Cori Sanchez as Secretary. We also welcomed Bob Blanchard and Erin Brown to the Board in March of 2019.

• CMS hosted Leon Shernoff for a talk about Boletes at the Oregon Wine Lab on October 16, 2018. The event was open to the public and we “packed the house” with 85 wine drinking fungi fans. A fun time was had by all!
• Our annual special speaker to celebrate the 2018 MPA Mushroom Festival was none other than longtime friend to CMS Taylor Lockwood. CMS has hosted Taylor and his phenomenal mushroom photographs many times over the years. So, it was only fitting to host him for his final tour – The Mushroom Adventures of Taylor Lockwood. If we had only known how amazing the presentation was going to be we would have booked a larger venue than the Hillyard Community Center where we fit in 105 mesmerized audience members.
• CMS was represented at the Oregon Country Fair as part of the Wild Edibles booth in the Community Village. Educational materials and mushroom models were displayed and 2 talks on “How Fungi can save the World” were given by Matthew Johnson and Meredith Allen.
• Heather & Pavel hosted a CMS mushroom potluck at their home in February 2018.
• CMS hosted a potluck at the Obsidians Lodge in March 2019 where CMS Member Darko Sojak had his mushroom photographs on display.

• Total # of species – 351  (excellent for our dry conditions)
• New species – 30 
• Awards
  • Best in Show: Amanita smithiana by Shannon Adams
  • 1^st Place: Aleuria aurantia by Doug Gammie
  • 2^nd Place: Heterobasidion occidentale by Sandy Patton
  • Honorable mention: Hydnellum regium, unknown

• Guest Identifiers: Noah Siegel (Co-author of Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast)
  Steve Trudell (Univ. of Washington/Seattle, Co-author of Mushrooms of the PNW)
  Shannon Adams (PSMS/Seattle)
• LCC Professor Susie Holmes and her Biology of Mushroom students staffed a terrific interactive Science table with numerous microscopes and interesting fungi to examine
• KVAL Report on the festival
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CMS granted $1000 to Richard Tehan for “Drug Discovery and Analysis of Secondary Metabolism in new species of Cordyceps.”  We look forward to hearing about Richards results in the coming year.

• Foray attendance for the year: 232 adults and 15 youth
• September 29, 2018- General – Coast – Matthew Johnson
• October 6, 2018 – MLCO Collection – Salt Creek Falls – Bitty Roy
• October 20, 2018 – Festival – Lower Cascades – Harriet Kelly
• October 21, 2018 – Festival – Upper Cascades – Marcia Peeters
• October 26, 2018 – Festival – Coast – Harriet Kelly
• November 3, 2018 – Lower Cascades – Joe Spivack
• November 10, 2018 – MLCO – Upper McKenzie River – Bruce Newhouse
• November 17, 2018 – Lower Cascades- Chris Melotti
• December 1, 2018 – MLCO Collection – Colburg Hills – Noah Siegel & Susie Holmes
• January 12, 2019 – Candy Cap – Coast Range – Ron & Sandy Patton
• March 16, 2019 – Coast Foray – Matthew Johnson
• May 18, 2019 – Morel Foray – Matthew Johnson & Lee Yamada
• June 1, 2019 – Spring Bolete Foray – Matthew Johnson & Pavel Gubanhikin

The North American Mycological Association (NAMA) contacted CMS in 2017 regarding a planned national foray in Oregon for 2018. CMS hosted the 2018 NAMA foray chairperson, Sam Landis, multiple times in 2017 and 2018 in preparation for the foray that was held at the Maclay Conference Center in Salem, October 11-14, 2018. Cheshire Mayrsohn and Lee Yamada provided vital support by scouting foray locations. In the end, numerous CMS members gave workshops or presentations during the week:

• Cheshire Mayrsohn – Dying with mushrooms workshop
• Susie Holmes – Microscopy workshop
• Joe Spivack – Beginners class; Basics of Fungi
• Skye Weintraub – Dinner or Dump it?
• Ron Hamill – Fungi and their forests in Western Oregon 
• Ron Hamill –  Fungi of Prince Wales Island and Southeast Alaska
• Ja Schindler – Tissue culturing and Wild Culture
• Ja Schindler – Myco-Cannabis Symbiosis Research Project 
• Dr. Bitty Roy – Fire and Fungi in Pacific Northwest Prairies
• Roo Vandegrift – The fungal genus Xylaria in a tropical cloud forest
• Valerie Nguyen & Sky Weintraub – Cooking Demos

After their initial formation in February of 2017, MLCO was anxious to do some documenting of area species in INaturalist and to send some fungi samples for DNA analysis. Here are the highlights for their action-packed first year.

• Created a working list of the 717 species of macrofungi known in Lane County by combining together the Mount Pisgah Show list with the Forest Service’s list, the LCC Herbarium list, the Honeyman State Park list and a study by Dr. Bitty Roy of Prairie Fungi.
• Created protocols on how to photograph fungi and how to use iNaturalist. These protocols are available on the newly created MLCO section of the CMS website.
• As of June 1, 2019, the MLCO project has 2531 observations and 537 species in INaturalist.
• During 2018-2019, MLCO submitted 356 fungus samples for DNA testing through the National Macrofungi project.
• MLCO received grants/funding for DNA sequencing from the North American Mycoflora Project ($300), CMS ($533), Gifts ($560), and a Fundraiser at the National Tap House ($184). The National Forest Service also provided $2000 in funding for the sequencing of 200 species from Willamette National Forest lands.
• Held 3 foray collection events in coordination with CMS:

• • October 6, 2018 – Inaugural foray to Salt Creek Falls led by Dr. Bitty Roy. 32 species within 24 different genera were documented and collected.
  • November 10, 2018, foray to the Upper McKenzie led by Bruce Newhouse. 42 species within 30 different genera were documented and collected.
  • December 1-2, a foray to the Marcola Hills area coupled with a microscopy workshop at Lane Community College. Both the foray and the workshop were conducted by Noah Siegel and Susie Holmes. 43 species within 25 different genera were documented and collected.

• In July of 2018, the CMS Board voted to explore the idea of adding a Member login to the CMS website. After some extensive research on implementation details, webmaster Sandy Patton began the website changes in April 2019. The hope is to have the Membership portion fully operational in time for the 2019/2020 season. Read more about the coming new capabilities.
• As of June 1, 2019:
  • CMS Enews has 1267 subscribers, an increase of 323
  • CMS Facebook page has 5000 followers, an increase of 795
  •  CMS Forums on Facebook has 897 followers, an increase of 210
  • CMS Twitter page has 1157 followers, an increase of 363
  • CMS Wild Mushroom Recipes page on Pinterest 237 followers, an increase of 36
• From June 2018 through May 2019 the team (mostly Heather Sielicki) posted over 104 stories about Fungi in the News on the CMS Facebook and Twitter pages. Heather also shared recipes and kept the CMS online community aware of upcoming mushroom events by CMS and in the PNW at large. Total Facebook posts were 249, exactly the same as the last season.
• The Mushroom of the Month features in the CMS Enews were:
  • September 2018 – Fungal Gnat
  • October 2018 – Agaricus subrutilescens
  • November 2018 – Honey Mushroom
  • December 2018 – Merry Christmush
  • January 2019 – Club Mushrooms
  • February 2018 – Gallerinas
  • March 2018 – Who are You?; a few unusual non-edibles
  •  April 2018 – Chestnut mushroom
  • May 2018 – The Spring Mushroom Hunt, or Not!

In addition to “official” CMS sponsored educational events, CMS members were independently out in  the community spreading their enthusiasm for and knowledge of fungi:

• Numerous CMS Members gave mushroom walks at the annual Yachats Mushroom Festival: Chris Melotti & Molly Widmer, Susie Holmes, Ja Schindler & Valerie Nguyen, Matthew Johnson, Lee Yamada, and Joe Spivack.
• Peg Boulay and Bruce Newhouse taught their annual class at REI titled “Forest Treasures: Finding and Enjoying Wild Mushrooms”.
• Chris Melotti & Molly Widmer – Assisted with the Yachats and the Sunriver mushroom festivals by providing mushroom identification expertise and giving mushroom walks.  They also led a mushroom walk at Mount Pisgah Arboretum.
• Cheshire Mayrsohn taught a mushroom dye class and a lichen dye class at the Eugene Textile Center, and a Dye workshop at the 2018 NAMA National foray.
• Ron & Sandy Patton taught a beginner mushroom identification class at Down to Earth and participated in the Corvallis Environmental Center’s Fungus Family Fun day by assisting with the mushroom display and leading mushroom walks.
• Joe Spivack gave a mushroom walk for the Friends of Hendricks Park.
• Mike Potts gave 3 mushroom classes/forays for the Siskiyou Field Institute in Southern Oregon.
• Susie Holmes gave Microscopy workshops with Noah Siegel at the Santa Cruz Mycoflora Project’s Wild Mushroom Foray and for the Oregon Mycological Society in Portland.