2025-2026 MLCO Annual Summary
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 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 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, check out the MLCO News & Updates page.
