2025-2026 Year in Review

Published · Updated

CMS Meetings

We had another excellent year of dynamic speakers including the very popular Chad Hyatt who spoke while cooking up tasty treats for us. The most well attended talk of the season was not on the subject of mushrooms at all; but everyone very much enjoyed hearing about the history of the Willamette Valley ecology from a representative of the Grand Ronde tribe. All of our talks included information for everyone, from novices to experts. With the exception of December, our meetings were in person at the Amazon Community Center. Due to the holidays and our speaker being in Alaska, we did a live stream only that month. We have also begun recording and posting presentations to YouTube afterward rather than live streaming in person meetings. We made this change, out of consideration for our speakers

MPA Mushroom Festival Highlights

As always, every MPA Mushroom Festival is a huge success! It is the Arboretums largest fund raiser of the year and CMS’s largest educational event. CMS invests in hiring guest experts to identify mushrooms, but we always recoup that investment plus more with sales of CMS t-shirts and mushroom themed items at the CMS sales tent.

A great big thank you to all of the CMS members who went on one of the four collecting field trips or collecting on their own, those who helped to set up on Saturday, those who helped with organizing and staffing the Talks on the Terrace, the Edible and Poisonous Tent and the CMS sales tent during the festival on Sunday. A special thanks to those who help with planning the festival, which begins in June!  CMS welcomed back Expert Identifiers Steve Trudell, author of “Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest”, and Efrén Cázares, co-author of “Ramaria of the Pacific Northwest”, to identify mushrooms gathered for the display. Additionally, several of our local club members assisted with identifying the more common mushrooms and those that can be identified without the aid of a microscope. A mushroom is not placed on the display until it is identified to species (or group/complex). And, as always, students from the Lane Community College Biology of Mushroom class were on hand Saturday to help set up the display.

Mushroom Display – The total number of species was 354 which is slightly above our average of 339 species on display since we began keeping records in 2007.The number of new species to the show was 31. The best in show mushrooms were Blue-Green Wood Cup, Oak Maze Polypore, and an Admirable Bolete.

Click here for the full details of the 2025 MPA Mushroom Festival and Mycoblitz

CMS Members’ Only Field Trips

Field trips are probably the number one reason to join a mushroom club. They provide an opportunity to learn where and how to hunt for mushrooms while staying safe and having assistance with identifying the mushrooms you find. Plus there is nothing more fun and rewarding than a day in the woods with fellow mycophiles. Below is a list of the 14 CMS Member field trips for the 2025-2026 season.

  • September 18, 2025 – Coast with Chris Melotti and Kavana
  • September 27, 2025 – Cascades/Hwy 126 with Matthew Johnson
  • October 8, 2025 – Cascades/Hwy-58 with Valerie Nguyen
  • October 21, 2025 – Festival collecting – Cascades/Hwy 126 with Chris Melotti
  • October 22, 2025 – Festival collecting – Coast Range with Ron & Sandy Patton
  • October 23, 2025 – Festival collecting – North Coast with Cheshire Mayrson
  • October 24, 2024 – Festival collecting – South Coast with Matt Mathiason
  • November 9, 2025 – Coast Range with Matt Mathiason
  • November 14, 2025 – Cascades/Hwy 126 with Matthew Johnson
  • November 22, 2025 – Cascades/Hwy 58 with Chris Melotti
  • January 4, 2026 – Coast Range with Ron & Sandy Patton
  • April 5, 2026 – Hwy 58 with Matt Mathiason
  • May 24, 2026 – Cascades/Hwy 58 with Matt Mathiason
  • June 6, 2026 – Cascade Lakes Highway with Matt Mathiason

Fungi Education in the Community

Trent Blizzard continues to serve as President of the North American Mycological Association (NAMA). Cheshire Mayrsohn has served along with Trent on the NAMA Executive Committee. Kristen Blizzard serves as the Chairman of the NAMA website committee and also serves on the NAMA Marketing and Foray committees. Ginger McKey who joined CMS in 2025 after moving to Eugene from Boulder Colorado serves as the Chairman of the NAMA Visual Arts Committee and is also the Volunteer Organizer for the 2026 NAMA Annual Foray. Sandy Patton serves on the NAMA Club Relations Committee.

In November 2025, Trent and Kristen Blizzard organized the NAMA Oregon Dunes Regional Foray. CMS members Cheshire Mayrsohn, Marcia Peeters, Jon Sommer, and Joe Spivack served as Foray Leaders for the event along with Trent and Kristen.

CMS often receives requests for educational talks and walks. Fortunately we have a cadre of CMS members who willingly volunteer their time to participate in community events that promote and educate about fungi throughout the year. Below are the community events for 2025-2026.

In addition to the MPA Mushroom Festival, several CMS members work alongside members of the Lincoln County Mycological Society (LCMS) and the North American Truffle Society (NATS) at the annual Yachats Mushroom Festival. These include: Susie Holmes, Matthew Johnson, Chris Melotti, Joe Spivack, Jon Sommer, Molly Widmer, and Lee Yamada.

At the end of the 2025 MPA Mushroom Festival, CMS members Joe Spivack and Lee Yamada once again gathered up several boxes of mushrooms for the Village School of Eugene. They did an afternoon talk about the basic biology of mushrooms and their role in the ecosystem. Several days later, they spent an adventurous and educational day in the woods, engaging in hands-on mushroom foraging.

Joe Spivack also takes time every fall, typically in November, to give a talk and lead a mushroom walk at Hendricks Park for the Friends of Hendricks Park.

Chris Melotti, Molly Widmer, and Ann Goddard assisted with the Lincoln County Mycological Society Fall Mushroom Show at the Gleneden Beach Community Center.

Bruce Newhouse led a foray for Oregon Wild, and gave Introduction to Mushroom talks to the Eugene Garden Club and the Osher Life Long Learning Institute.

Ron Patton gave a Fascinating Fungal Facts talk at the Drop Bear Brewery’s Nerd Night. While Sandy Patton gave the same talk to 7th graders at the Northwest Christian Academy. They both brought a display of mushrooms and gave a short talk as part of a talk on the Power of Mushroom Supplements given at the Eugene Campbell Center.

CMS Vice President Matthew Johnson has maintained a CMS presence in the Community Village section of the Oregon Country Fair for many years. We don’t have a lot of space, but Matthew educates all of the myco curious that wander his way.

CMS member and 2025 Scholarship recipient, Heather Dawson and her truffle dogs Rye and Pyro have become superstars in the Myco Community. They were even invited to conduct two pre-festival truffle forays at the Telluride Mushroom Festival, which is undoubtedly the most well known mushroom festival in the country.

Another CMS member who is very active in the mycological community is Jon Sommer. In addition to the Cascade Mycological Society, Jon is a member of four other mushroom societies, and is currently President of the Lincoln County Mycological Society. He also serves on the Board of the Colorado Mycological Society in the capacity of past President. Jon’s passion is teaching Mushroom ID classes. This past year he taught ID classes at the NAMA Annual Foray in Vermont, SOMA Camp in California, the Wild Rivers Mushroom Festival and for LCMS in Newport. He also did mushroom walks/forays at the NAMA Regional Foray in Florence, and at the Yachats Mushroom Festival.

Last, but certainly not least. CMS partners with the City of Eugene Recreation Services to offer seasonal educational outings and classes to the community through the Amazon Community Center. This year’s events were an “Introduction to Wild Mushroom Identification” class taught by Ron and Sandy Patton. A Family Mushroom Foray led by Joe Spivack. And, a “Cooking with Mushrooms” demonstration by local chefs organized by Heather Sielicki.

Grants and Scholarships

CMS typically awards the two thousand dollar Freeman Rowe scholarship annually. The selected recipient receives $1000 upon their selection. After presenting the results of their research project at a CMS general meeting they receive the remainder.

Jessie Uehling, 2010 Scholarship Recipient

Unfortunately, we did not have anyone apply for a grant or scholarship during our 2024/2025 season; which has not happened in quite a while. Currently CMS limits our awards to students who are attending a college or university within the state of Oregon. Because we had no applicants the CMS Board will consider expanding our scope a little wider for the upcoming year.

After all our very first scholarship recipient was none other than Dr. Jessie Uehling, the Mycology professor at Oregon State University. But, when she applied for and was granted a CMS scholarship she was attending Humboldt State University in California.

We were able to gift CMS Family memberships to two local nonprofits for fund raisers: the Little French School and the Adams School Community group and

During the 2025-2026 season, CMS was approached by the Lincoln County Mycological Society (LCMS) with a request to administer a newly created scholarship in honor of Phil and Janet Lamberson. They asked that the process be in line with the process we use for the Freeman Rowe Scholarship. The only difference being that the results of any research conducted from the use of the funds be presented at an LCMS Board meeting.

The LCMS Scholarship is for $1500 and may be applied for here.

Macrofungi of Lane County, OR (MLCO)

This year was the culmination of several years work by the MLCO project headed by Dr. Bitty Roy, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon. Mushrooms that have been collected, identified, and DNA sequenced were placed into herbarium packets, labels were affixed, and they are now headed to the herbarium at Oregon State University in Corvallis. This means that they will be accessible to the community for study.

The Oregon State University Herbarium (abbreviation of OSC) is housed in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. With the aid of a grant from the National Science Foundation, renovation and construction of a new herbarium facility at Oregon State University was completed in January, 1994. The collections contain approximately 550,000 vascular plant, bryophyte, algal, and fungal specimens. Although the collections are worldwide in scope, they focus on the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The specimens are stored in 382 herbarium cases mounted on 20 mobile carriages. This facility houses the three major herbarium collections in Oregon: Oregon State University, University of Oregon, and Willamette University. The three collections bring complementary strengths to the newly consolidated herbarium.

Those species whose DNA sequence revealed they were a new species will be the next project for MLCO. Bitty and the team will be doing more microscopy to help with getting these new species described and formally named.

The MLCO project on iNaturalist is constantly growing/gathering inputs through everyday people uploading their fungal finds to iNaturalist. Every mushroom uploaded to iNaturalist that is within the MLCO geographical boundaries and meets all of the MLCO requirements is automatically added to the project. Below are the current statistics for the 3 projects maintained by MLCO on iNaturalist. Note that the number of species stats is a total and not necessarily validated.

Updated stats below on 7/21/2026

Macrofungi of Lane County Oregon (Main project)

Project Description: This project was initiated to inventory and document the macrofungi of Lane County, Oregon, and its surrounding areas. It is sanctioned as a part of the Cascade Mycological Society (CMS).

  • Total observations: 112,718 (increase of 21,218)
  • Total species: 2,812 ( increase of 441)
  • # of Observers: 8,166 6,752 (increase of 1,414)
  • # of Identifiers: 3,236

Woodchip Fungi of Lane County Oregon – (sub-project)

Project Description: The Woodchip Fungi of Lane County project was created in December 2019. This project documents the fungi present in wood chip habitats. Primarily geared towards urban landscapes in the Eugene-Springfield area, it includes fungi present in any woodchip (i.e., wood chip or mulch-covered landscape areas) habitat within Lane County.

  • Total observations: 199 (no change)
  • Total species: 68 (no change)
  • #people/contributors: 80 (no change)

Vouchered Macrofungi of Lane County Oregon (sub-project)

Project Description: This project is for designated users who voucher fungal specimens for fungaria (fungal herbaria) in addition to making photo observations on iNat. If you would like to do this, please contact Bitty Roy on iNaturalist – @bit. Please do not join the project without doing that first. A subset of these vouchered specimens is selected for DNA testing.

  • Total vouchered: 1212 (increase of 12)
  • Total species: 588 (increase of 50)
  • #people/contributors: 56 (no change)

Each year, MLCO organizes the Lane County Mushroom Show Mycoblitz in the week leading up to the MPA Mushroom Festival. This corresponds to the time that CMS members are out collecting mushrooms for the mushroom display. Observers may be CMS members or not, as everyone is welcome to participate. The most observed species that week was the very popular Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric. The most active observers for the Mycoblitz were Elliot Bury, Anne Goddard, and Jordon Gates. Elliot Bury, a Fisheries and Wildlife student at OSU had the most observations with 171; Anne who participates every year had 78. Jordon was not far behind Anne with 69 observations. Elliot also had the most number of unique species observed, with 98. While Jordon had 43 and Anne had 36 unique species.

Elliot Bury is a Fisheries and Wildlife undergraduate student at OSU. Anne is a long-time member of CMS who volunteers her time at the MPA and Yachats festivals and designed the CMS t-shirt in 2018. Jordon Gates, whose picture I had to include, is also a OSU student who has completed his Bachelors degree in Botany/Plant Biology. His next goal is to obtain a Masters Degree in Mycology.

Just as important as the observers are the identifiers. Once again, August Jackson contributed the most identifications with 244. Chris Kleine assisted with 150 identifications. And Hillary Rose Dawson contributed 108 identifications.

To keep abreast of the MLCO project, go to the MLCO News & Updates page.

CMS Special Events/Activities

Each year, we seem to have some type of new or special event or activity in addition to our monthly meetings and member field trips. Sometimes they become annual events or activities, while others do not. 

Annual Meeting and Mushroom Grillout

Our end-of-year Annual Meeting and Mushroom Grillout is always among our most popular events. So, I will begin with that.

As a registered 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, we are required to have both an Annual Meeting and an Annual Vote of our Board of Directors. We now hold our voting online in advance of the Annual Meeting. As an enticement, members must vote to attend the Annual Meeting, which features approximately 10 minutes of business and over 2 hours of fun and camaraderie. Additionally, there is a wide variety of delicious food. CMS purchases a large quantity of morels suitable for stuffing, as well as two or three other types of mushrooms for tasting. Some members assist with stuffing morels and food preparation, but the majority of the work is done by the CMS Board as a thank you to members who participate in voting.

Myco Mingle!

We continued the Myco Mingles we began in October of 2023. They have provided an excellent opportunity for CMS members to socialize, share stories of their mushroom outings, and connect with other members. This season we hosted Myco Mingles in September, December, February and April. All were hosted at the Drop Bear Brewery owned by CMS members David and Lorraine Lehane . The December Myco Mingle included both a Christmush sale, and a Myco Bingo. Drop Bear typically has Bingo on Sunday’s which overlapped with our Myco Mingle, so we offered up some additional mushroom items as bingo prizes.

Exclusive Film Showing

CMS sponsored an evening and a matinee showing of the Australian film Follow the Rain at the Eugene Art House. World famous fungi hunters invite audiences on a unique expedition into the wilderness of Australia, where the symbiotic dance between fungi, plants and animals, unlocks nature’s greatest secrets. This was a very special opportunity as this film has not been released in the US. Although, the Boise Idaho mushroom club, did debut the film in the US prior to CMS.

Club members were so mesmerized by the time lapse photography and cinematography of the film, that as soon as it ended we started talking about bringing it back in the fall for another showing.

CMS Members love NAMA Campaign!

During May of 2026 NAMA held a membership drive and requested the over 90 affiliated clubs to participate by asking their club members who are also NAMA members to share what they love about NAMA. Of coarse NAMA made it easy and fun for clubs to participate by providing graphical templates for clubs to use.

These graphics were primarily intended for Social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook. However, not everyone, especially those who enjoy nature more than electronic devices, participate in those platforms. So you can view all of the graphics for all CMS members who participated in the fun here. Some had so many good things to say they needed two!

Game of Shrooms!

Once again, CMS member Sandy Patton participated on behalf of CMS in Game of Shrooms, a worldwide Art-N-Seek event. Five mushroom art objects were placed at each of two local parks: Bethel Park and State Street Park. Both parks are in West Eugene, where Sandy had not previously placed items.

CMS Board of Directors

Above are the 2025/2026 Board of Directors, which once again is a repeat of the previous year. CMS members may log in and find all of the Board Meeting minutes and information on how to get more involved on the CMS Board Activities page.

  • Chris Melotti – President and Speaker Coordinator
  • Matthew Johnson – Vice President and Field Trip Coordinator 
  • Erin Brown – Recording Secretary and co-coordinator of the CMS booth at the MPA Mushroom Festival
  • Eugena Mathiason: Treasurer and co-coordinator of the CMS booth at the MPA Mushroom Festival
  • Dan Berlant – Board member at large and MPA Festival Volunteer Coordinator
  • Lee Yamada – Board member at large and Volunteer Extraordinare
  • Matt Mathiason – Board member at large and frequent Field Trip leader
  • Bob Blanchard – Board member at large and provider of yummy treats at Board meetings

Tags:

You may also like...