Events Recap

March 5th - Chaga Foray

On Saturday, March 5th, MMS members undertook the “Great Cross Country Ski/Winter Chaga Foray.” Read the review in this newsletter - Chaga Foray Review.

March 14th - MMS Meeting

Our March 14th meeting featured Maj Padamsee, who gave a presentation: Identity Crisis in the Genus Psathyrella. Maj is a graduate student in mycology, who is working with our scientific adviser, Dr. Dave McLaughlin. Maj has taken on the challenge of redefining the genus Psathyrella for her PhD thesis. Psyathyrella species are notoriously overlooked and under- appreciated LBMs. After all, how many do you know? For most of us, our familiarity with the genus ends after P. condolleana and P. gracillis. It turns out that recent molecular evidence casts doubts about the validity of Psathyrella as a genus, i.e. some species currently in the genus may be more closely related to species in other genera. To make matters worse, no one has thoroughly studied the genus since Alexander Smith’s monograph in the 1940’s, and anyone who has tried to use Dr. Smith’s keys finds them next to impossible to interpret. Maj will be doing lots of collecting and studying of Psathyrella specimens, looking for good field and microscopic characters in order to sort out this problematic group. Maj’s presentation was especially instructive regarding the history and practice of mushroom systematics, and we got to view a number of those fancy phylogenetic trees, which are all the rage in professional mycology circles these days. We are indeed fortunate to have a Psathyrella expert among us—they are a rare breed!

March 26th - Annual Science Summit

On Saturday, March 26th, MMS was an exhibitor at the Annual Science Summit of the Science Museum of Minnesota. The club, as one of the “Community Partners Serving Science,” displayed the exciting exhibit that the Museum grant helped us to create. President Ron Spinosa set up the “visual feast” that spanned four tables with books, club brochures, posters of fungi, cultivation tips, mushroom replicas, Taylor Lockwood’s DVD show, and even fresh samples---several species from a local Asian market as well as recently harvested Chaga! Ron, Glenn Cruezinger, Maxine Bethke, and Adele Mehta were kept busy answering a wide variety of questions from the more than 350 people who stopped by the booth.

“Your Honor, the jury finds the defendant guilty.”

MMS Exhibit at the Annual Science Summit
Science Museum of Minnesota, 2005

Our group also gained knowledge about fungi from visitors as far away as Australia, China, and Russia. For the club members who staffed the booth, the final event that capped off the day was Maxine’s demonstration of the method she devised to pack up the exhibit so that it can easily be carried by one person!

Submitted by Adele Metha

April 11th - MMS Meeting

Dr. Gail Celio presented an informative as well as entertaining presentation at the April 11th Meeting: The Fungi of the X-Files, or “Mulder, there has to be a reasonable explanation why an extra–terrestrial volcano inhabiting mushroom would be turning people into killers!” Dr. Celio has been an avid fan of the popular TV series, The X-Files, since its inception. She noted that there were several episodes in which fungi played a prominent role as agents of weird and often grisly mayhem. Being a mycologist as well as a fan, Dr. Celio did her own investigation of the fungi of the X-Files, and she put together her results in the presentation, which we had the pleasure of experiencing. Her presentation featured several film clips from various X-Files episodes, followed by her mycological commentary. A short review cannot begin to cover bizarre fungal behavior, but here’s a taste: A humongous fungus that fruits hallucinogenic puffballs and digests its hallucinating victims, reducing them to skeletons covered with green slime. People whose tattoos start talking to them and commanding them to commit murder. The fungal connection? A Russian tattoo artist obtained his special red dye from imported wheat, which turned out to be infected with Claviceps purpera, the ergot fungus, which is the source of LSD. If you are intrigued by all of this, you can still catch reruns of the X-Files on the Sci-Fi Channel.

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