President's Message

Many quadrillion mushroom spores have wafted in the wind since our last issue of The Toadstool Review. In the meantime, MMS members have had the opportunity to appreciate a multitude of fascinating fungi at our fall meetings and enjoy adventures and discoveries on our forays. In addition, MMS hosted a mushroom workshop/foray at Tamarack Nature Center and an exhibit at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Fall Festival. Some other important events were the Annual Potluck Dinner, the 2004 MMS Photo Contest, and election of officers for 2005. MMS was also featured in an illustrated article in the Minnesota Daily. That is a lot of activity! I will do my best to report on some of the highlights.

Meeting and Event Reviews

We started off the fall mushroom season on August 28th with a foray at Fort Snelling State Park. It was a beautiful day, and we had a nice turnout. We were fortunate to have Dr. Pat Leacock , from the Chicago Field Museum, join us on the foray. (See his web site at http://www.Lacterius.com) He was able to provide some IDs on a number of mushrooms that had everyone stumped. The one that I remember was a pretty little pinkish polypore-like species with white hairs on the upper surface and jelly wrinkles on the underside. Pat informed us that it was the former Merulius tremellosus, which we could find in Lincoff, but which was recently transferred to the genus, Phlebia (we might as well get used to these name changes—there will be many more to come) The most spectacular find was two nice clusters of the delicately toothed Hericium ramosum. I took one home and tried a new and very simple cooking technique. Melted butter was brushed on the Hericium (cleaning it was a challenge) and then baked it in a hot oven (475 degrees) for 10 minutes. It was fantastic!

The tables in Hodson Hall were overflowing with mushrooms at our first meeting of the fall season on Sept. 13th. We had some new members, whom we were pleased to see. Some interesting finds were:

• A large cluster of cestipose white mushrooms, which puzzled us all, but thanks to Lee Moellerman’s searching of his huge collection of field guides, it was identified as the rare Lyophylum connatum
• A huge 12 inch Panus strigosus; a beautiful example of the gypsy mushroom, Rozites caperata, found by Lee
• Some oyster-like mushrooms, but orange and very stinky—Phyllotopsis nidulans.

A number of club members took turns talking about various mushrooms on display, providing relief from the usual pedantic rants of the president. Adele Mehta did a great job of pointing out the essential differences between Blewits and purple Corts. Maxine Bethke brought in some Jack-o-lantern mushrooms, Omphalatus olearius. You may recall an appeal for fresh specimens of that species in the last newsletter, to help provide material for a research project by biochemistry grad student, Sean Agger. Well, Maxine found 15 pounds of O. olearius for Sean. I recently learned for Dr. Dave McLaughlin that Sean has successfully grown cultures of O. olearius in the lab.

MMS was invited to do a mushroom workshop and foray at Tamarack Nature Center on September 18th. The event turned out to be a great success. There were about 30 people, children to seniors, attending the workshop. The newly completed MMS traveling mushroom exhibit was on display. Maxine Bethke, did a wonderful job, in her down to earth manner, of introducing mushrooms and mushrooming to the group. Then four foray groups were led by Maxine Bethke, Lee Moellerman, Dawn Cameron, and Ron Spinosa to different habitats in the Nature Center grounds. The visitors had a good time (except for one, who ventured into stinging nettles with shorts), and we found a nice variety of mushrooms. We returned to the nature with baskets full of mushrooms, which were identified and discussed. The workshop was capped off by Maxine firing up her trusty electric frying pan and treating the visitors to tasty samples of Hen-of –the Woods, Grifola frondosa. I am happy to report that the workshop brought in some new members to MMS.

On September 25th a group of about 15 people attended a foray at Nerstrand State Park. It was warm and sunny —a beautiful day for trekking in the woods. We found many oyster mushrooms. There were enough for everyone to take some home of dinner. We also found quite a few lobster mushrooms and some large Laccaria ochropurpurea. I had read that L. ochropurpurea was a good edible, but had never tried them, so I cooked some up when I got home. They were firm and meaty, and I found them to be “good”. I would rate them a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. Our group was joined by a couple of enthusiastic Russian mushroomers, who had heard about our foray. They were eager for us to tell them which of mushrooms that they had collected were edible. There was one species of mushroom that they knew from their homeland, and they had quite a few. It was Leccinum aurantiacum. Before we went home Lance Peterson went to his camper and pulled out his Coleman stove, which he always has handy for such occasions, and sautéed our freshly picked lobsters to perfection in decadent dollops of butter. Needless to say, they were seriously scrumptious.

Our meeting on September 27th came at the peak of the fall mushroom season, and there were even more mushrooms to appreciate than at the September 13th meeting. A number of giant puffballs were very conspicuous, but there were some other softball-sized puffballs with a patterned surface and a purple spore mass, namely Calvatia cyathiformis. Also prominent were a variety of species of Amanita, including the beautiful white (and deadly) Destroying Angel, Amanita bisporigera and Amanita citrina, with a delicate yellow hue and the smell of raw potatoes. Quite a few colorful Amanita muscaria were on display. Maxine Bethke brought a collection of A. muscaria, showing the stages of growth from button to parasol. Lee Moellerman brought in some Agaricus subrufescens, which he found in abundance on his land. A. subrufescens is similar to the Prince, Agaricus augustus, and its pleasant almond flavor makes it on of the best of the choice edibles. Some other Agaricus species that were brought in were A. campestris, A. placomyces, and A. silvaticus. Boletes were certainly not in short supply. There a number of species of Suillis and some beautiful large Boletus edulis, which were also collected by Maxine. I’ll mention one more mushroom—a monster bolete that was at least 10 inches in diameter. It was slimy and had a thick purple leathery veil. The pores bruised a purple brown, leaving stains on the fingers of the same color. Did you guess it? Yes, it was Paragyrodon sphaerosporus, and it was the largest example of that species I had ever seen. There is some controversy about the edibility of this mushroom. Adele Mehta was persuaded to take the big bolete home and try it. She gave it a “good” rating.

I am sorry to say that we did not get many MMS members to help out at our booth at the at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Fall Festival on October 2nd. I want to thank Glen Creuziger for staying for the whole day. Our display was outdoors this year, and it was a windy day. Without Glen’s assistance everything would have blown away. I also would like to thank Maxine Bethke, who went out the day before to her secret hunting grounds, and provided a nice assortment of mushrooms for our display. There lots of wine caps, Hygrophorus russula, Suillis, a beautiful Boletus edulis, and most impressive, a grocery bag full of giant puffballs. The puffballs really caught the visitor’s attention. Incidentally, this year was a great one for giant puffballs. Many visitors stopped by and said they had seen the strange white balls, but didn’t know what they were. Some even reported that they had seen some on the arboretum grounds. After the event I went home, sliced some big puffballs like loaves of bread, and used them to make Puffball Parmesan--a recipe I learned from Doris Johannes, who is featured in the Member Profile in this newsletter.

Mushrooms were becoming more scarce by the time of our October 11th meeting; however, one of our new members, at his first meeting, brought in a whole cooler full of Fried Chicken Mushrooms, Lyophyllum decastes (unfortunately, he had frozen them). Doris Johannes came with a spectacular rosette of Pleurotus ostreatus, which she generously divided up for folks to take home and enjoy. The turnout for this meeting was rather modest, but that provided a good opportunity for our old timers to mentor some of the newer members on the art of mushroom identification.

For our final foray of 2004, we returned to Louisville Swamp. As soon as we arrived it started to rain. We were not deterred. Out came the rain gear (or a large plastic trash bag) and off we went. Some youngsters were part of the group, and they had fun finding honey mushrooms or holding up a mushroom and going, “Can you eat it?”. They were also excited when we came a cross a group of snow white Clitcybe the size of dinner plates (Clitocybe gigantea). The adults rejoiced upon finding a number of downed logs covered with oysters and velvet foot (Flammulina velutipes). Along also on the adventure were two guests. One was Al Smith, a member of the Washington Mycological Society, here visiting relatives, one of whom gave him a flyer they had picked up at the Arboretum Fall Festival, which gave MMS foray info. We were also accompanied by Kathy Easthagen, who is a photographer for the Minnesota Daily. (You can see other examples of her beautiful work on her web site: www.karmabats.com.) The photos she took accompanied an article in the October 26 issue of the Minnesota Daily titled “Fungi for some, obsession for others”. The article, written by Tessa Archambault, included interviews with Glen Creuziger and Maxine Bethke, both of whom have severe cases of Myco-OCD. Actually, the article was a nice tribute to MMS, and we appreciate the exposure that it provided to the university community for our society.

MMS Photo Contest 2004

The new all digital formant has rejuvenated our photo contest! Last year the contest was cancelled because of insufficient entries. This year it was feast over famine. We viewed a total of 108 “slides”. The slides in this year’s contest were jpeg digital images, projected with the fine digital projection equipment in 490 Hodson Hall. Contestants could enter prints or 35mm slides, which were scanned to digital format, as well as jpeg images from digital cameras. Now that digital cameras are becoming more popular, I am sure we will be getting lots more digital images in the future. Members attending the November meeting judged the slides on a 1 to 5 scale. There were many beautiful photos to behold, and some displaying a rather odd sense of humor. Be sure to come to the upcoming awards banquet in February to see some of the best. The winners of the 2004 photo contest will be announced and presented with their awards.

Election of Officers

The November meeting was also the occasion for the election of MMS officers. Here is the new roster of officers for 2005:

President—Ron Spinosa
Past President—Bob Fulgency
Vice President—Dawn Cameron
Treasurer—Lise Wolff
Recording Secretary—Glen Creuziger
Corresponding Secretary—Steve Netzman

Ron Spinosa
ronspin@juno.com