MMS Newsletter - June 2002

President's Message

Spring Forays of 2002

The club's spring activities began with the foray of May 4, 2002, at Beaver Creek State Park in the Southeast corner of the state near Caledonia. Dr. Tom Volk, this nation's foremost morel expert, came to the event and brought with him several members of his class at the University of Wisconsin. A few new members also joined us for the hunt. Lee Moellerman, as always, led our small troop into the leafless woods on a bright and cool morning. After an hour or so of diligently looking for them, only a handful of morels were discovered, and they were disappointedly small ones at that. The final tally for our first expedition was as follows: several Yellow Morels (Morchella esculenta), two False Morels (Gyromitra gigas), two Verpa (Verpa conica) and one Red Elf Cup (Sarcoscypha austriaca). Not too surprising when you consider the unusually cold spring weather this year.

The long anticipated Morel Overnight of May 11 and 12 turned out to be an outstanding success and treat for us long cooped up Minnesotans. Over 25 members attended the foray held at the Whitewater Wildlife Area located near Elba. We began the foray at 11:00 AM on a cool and rainy Saturday morning. The first site we visited turned out to indeed have morels, although not in the numbers we are used to finding near Elba in the spring. Ultimately we did find a few dozen small morels, and although they were not as scarce as the week before, they were far from abundant. During the search at this first site a group of three of our members lost their way for a while; however, they eventually did make it back to join the main group. One of our wanderers said that during that episode all she could think of was Shackelton's Antarctic adventure. Based on that analogy, I believe she will be careful to avoid becoming separated from the main foray group again. I am sympathetic though, as I have on more than one occasion gotten disoriented in the forest and several times it has taken me more than a few minutes to get reoriented. To be sure, it is not a pleasant feeling. Although it is true that the morels were few and far between, and that we were trudging along muddy forest trails in the rain with wet socks and boots, we were nevertheless having an awful lot of fun. In addition to enjoying just being outdoors for the walk, we were looking forward to the evening's activities and anticipating the continuation of the hunt the next day. Following the day's foray, after everyone had taken a warm shower and made a change of clothes, we met for a fine dinner, good company and great conversation at the Elba House restaurant. The mushroom stories told around our large table were many and varied, and definitely on a par with any fisherman's tale. At last the evening's gaiety gave way to thoughts of a good night's sleep and an early start on the next day. We each headed for our evening's accommodations, some to their bed and breakfast at a restored old mansion, some to their motel and the more hardy souls to their tents and sleeping bags in nearby White Water State Park.

Sunday morning several of us had an early breakfast together at the Elba House, after which we met again with Lee Moellerman to plan the day's activities. It was still overcast and sprinkling, so a few of our members decided not to participate in the day's foray. Those of us who did continue the search were rewarded with a few more morels to take home. By noon my so-called waterproof boots were soaked so I too gave up the hunt, but Lee and several others continued into the afternoon and Lee told me later that they found a good many more morels.

The foray of May 18, which was held at the Deer Creek section of Wild River State Park, drew a large number of members. It was a clear, dry day and thankfully no state birds (otherwise known as mosquitoes) to deal with. Lee led the way to what we believed would be a successful search for morels; this optimism was based upon the fact that last year we found an abundant number of morels in the area. After three hours of searching failed to turn up a significant number of them, it was decided to visit the nearby Carlos Avery Wildlife Area where Lee had found several Black Morels (Morchella elata) the day before. After spending about an hour there, we did manage to find several Black and a few Yellow Morels (M. esculenta). Also found were Verpa conica, Mica Cap (Coprinus micaceus) and the Deadly Galerina (Galerina unicolor).

The Lake Maria State Park foray of May 25, the last of our scheduled spring forays was held Memorial Day weekend, on a sunny and pleasantly cool Saturday. A good-sized group of new and old members attended this get together. When we originally scheduled the foray we thought it might be too late in the season for morels, but as we now know, it was a wise decision. It tuned out to be our best foray, result wise, of the season which otherwise has been disappointing as a result of the cold weather. Everyone was pleased with our good fortune as each of us found at least a few morels. We looked for them in two areas of the park and were successful at both locations. The habitat was on low ground near the edge of the lake where it was damp with an abundant number of recently dead elms. Around noon we met for lunch and most of those attending agreed to continue our efforts at a nearby State Wildlife Area. Although none of us had been to the area before, we felt it would be worth a quick search. We did visit two spots, but after checking them out we decided to call it a day. Even though this was the club's last scheduled spring foray of the year, I believe that members will continue to find morels in the Twin Cities area during the first week of June. In fact, the weekend after Labor Day I came across over 130 medium to large sized morels along the Mississippi River near some huge old cottonwood trees, thus proving that with a little patience, persistence and luck one can, even in a poor year like this one, find morels.

At our first Monday evening meeting of the year on May 6, members enjoyed viewing a video about morels and when and where to find them. It was a timely story as it introduced our new members to morels and provided them with some appreciation of why experienced mushroomers become so excited about the club's annual spring morel forays. It was no surprise that we had only a few mushrooms to examine and identify that evening. However, Eva Villanueva did manage to amuse us with her latest morel poem, for which we thank her.

The MMS meeting at REI on Monday, May 13 attracted over 35 people made up of about half members and half visitors. The facility at REI was perfect for the event and the REI personnel were most accommodating. Our members brought in several species of recently discovered spring mushrooms for display purposes and also for our visitors to examine; Eva Villanueva came with some of her wonderful morel wreaths; and Anna Gerenday gave a fine presentation with slides on morels and other spring mushrooms. There was a lot of interest shown by our visitors who asked many questions about morels, which were answered by our members. Several visitors asked for and received club membership applications making the REI meeting a success. I was later told by the REI management that they very much appreciated MMS giving a presentation at their store and invited us to do it again in the future.

During the Monday evening meeting of May 20, members enjoyed watching a NAMA produced video on the use of mushroom derived chemicals to dye yarn. As far as I am aware no one in the club has taken up this hobby. Following the video, Anna Gerenday gave a short presentation on some of the spring mushrooms that she and members of the Paul Bunyan group found while on a foray near Brainerd the previous Saturday. Anna had visited that group to give a talk on "Collecting and Identifying Morels." At our meeting the members, after expressing their universal consternation, concluded that the unusually cool weather caused the fruiting of mushrooms in Minnesota to be delayed by at least two weeks. The hope was expressed that the foray to Lake Maria State Park would finally produce lots of morels as well as some of the other good to eat spring mushrooms. (See above for results.)

On June 3, Dr. Dave McLaughlin, University of Minnesota Professor of Plant Biology and Curator of Fungi at the Bell Museum and one of our club's Scientific Advisors, gave a presentation on how mushrooms are prepared, maintained and catalogued for the herbarium. From our meeting room in Hodson Hall, Dave led us over to the herbarium and once we arrived there, he explained how each mushroom specimen is first brought to the field room where it is examined and pertinent information is recorded, the collections are numbered and placed in the dehydrator. The reason for a separate field room is so that the spores from the fresh specimens do not cause contamination of cultures and laboratory experiments.

After drying, the specimens are stored for several days in a freezer at -20 oC in order to kill any insects that may be in them. Finally the specimens are stored with the collection, some of which go back to the late 1800s. The herbarium also maintains photographic slides of many of the specimens taken prior to their being dehydrated. Dave said that the herbarium holds multiple examples of about 1,000 different species of mushrooms, mostly form Minnesota. Dave also demonstrated the herbarium web site, which was most interesting. The web address for the site is fungi.umn.edu. We thank Dave for giving us a chance to see the herbarium and explaining to us its inner workings. We offered to assist Dave by collecting at our MMS forays species that he feels would enhance the herbarium's collection. To accomplish this Dave will provide the names of those that would be the most desirable for inclusion in the collection.

At our meeting of June 17 Dr. Dan Cziderpiltz from the University of Wisconsin in Madison gave a talk on the Fungi of Israel. He, Tom Volk and another mycologist visited that country in 2000 to conduct a study at the behest of the US Department of Agriculture. The main purpose of the visit was to examine a type of fungi that helps with the decomposition of fallen forest trees. There are very few forested areas in Israel because of the continuous human occupation of the area over thousands of years which resulted in almost complete deforestation. The forests there now have been planted within the last fifty years and consequently it is difficult to find any native fungi as the original forests have long been destroyed. The most interesting eatable mushrooms in Israel are a type of Suillus and a species of morel that looks a lot like our Morchella esculenta. Although the morel may indeed be an M. esculenta, it is unbelievably in season for nine months a year, a mushroomer's dream come true.

Our last spring meeting of the club was held on June 24 (I know spring officially ended on June 20). It was a most interesting meeting as member Will Dikel presented a show of several dozen 3D mushrooms slides which were created about 1950 by the famous mycologist Alexander Smith and which are among the collections of the Wangensteen Library located at Diehl Hall on the campus of the University of Minnesota. The slides are rarely taken out of the library and we were able to view them only because the custodian of the slides accompanied them to Hodson Hall for the event and then returned them to the library once Will's presentation was completed. Will brought along a special projector and had 3D glasses for everyone. The viewing was quite remarkable and it is probably the first time the slides have been seen in many years. A rare viewing experience and a privilege much enjoyed by our members.

With no advance warning Ron Spinosa was asked to read off the names of the mushrooms from a list. In the completely dark classroom he read the names with the help of a small flashlight as the slides rotated through the projector. An additional difficulty he had to overcome was that the names of the mushrooms on the list were those used in the late 1940s many of which have since been changed. Ron's effort added to the success of the event.

Following the slide presentation we identified the mushrooms that had been brought to the meeting. Ron, Chairman of the Identification Committee, led us through the surprisingly large number of mushrooms. Maxine Bethke once again brought in her wonderful discoveries; she also brought her frying pan and sauteed two delicious species she had found, Wine Caps (Stropharia rugoso annulata) and King Boletes (Boletus edulis). It was an outstanding close to the club's spring activities and we thank Maxine for generously preparing and sharing her mushrooms.

Bob Fulgency
robjoful@aol.com