MLCO 2024-2025 Annual Summary

There has been a lot of progress on the Lane County Macrofungi project this year.  Dan Morton has single-handedly produced a great deal of spectacular photography and microscopy, seemingly adding to the list of species every time he ventures out.  A major paper about the Macrofungi of the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, which is in Lane County, will be out later this year.  This work was led by Bitty Roy and her lab group, which included Carolyn Delevich, Heather Dawson, and Haley Burrill, as well as many other co-authors, including Susie Holmes and Noah Siegel, along with OSU scientists Posy Busby and Joe Gagne.  More than a thousand species of macrofungi are now known from the Andrews forest. Numerous CMS members helped with collecting in the Andrews, including Ralph Begley, Marcia Peters, Sandy Patton, Cheshire Mayrsohn, Ann Goddard, Bruce Newhouse, and Dan Morton.

The statistics for all MLCO iNaturalist projects are listed below. You will see there was a 25 percent increase in observations in our primary project and over a 50% increase in the number of vouchered specimens. We will continue our progress by hosting a few work parties in the fall to create herbarium packets and affix labels for Lane County collections that have been sequenced. Help is appreciated!

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. The increase in numbers cited in parentheses represents the change since the last year’s CMS Year in Review was published on September 7, 2024. Note that the number of species stats is a total and not necessarily validated.

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: 91,500 (increase of 17,404)
• Total species: 2371 ( increase of 255)
• #people/contributors: 6,752 (increase of 1,170)

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 (increase of 3)
• Total species: 68 (increase of 3)
• #people/contributors: 80 (increase of 2)

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: 1200 (increase of 763)
• Total species: 538 (increase of 124)
• #people/contributors: 56 (increase of 2)

Each year, MLCO organizes a 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 Andrea Wuenschel, Chris Kleine, and Anne Goddard. Andrea Wuenschel had the most observations with 115; Chris was not far behind with 96. Ann followed with 76 observations. Chris had the most number of unique species observed, with 68. While Andrea and Ann both observed 36 unique species.

Andrea is a biologist, birder, and all-around naturalist who is a former CMS member. Chris is a CMS member and is also on the Board of Directors for the Utah Mycological Society. Ann 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.

Just as important as the observers are the identifiers. Once again, August Jackson contributed the most identifications with 477. Hillary Rose Dawson contributed 293 identifications. After making observations, Chris Kleine jumped in to help with identifications, racking up 157.

To keep abreast of the MLCO project, check out the MLCO News & Updates page.