BULLETIN OF THE PUGET SOUND MYCOLOGICALSOCIETY
Number 327, December 1996

Spore Prints

Electronic Edition is published monthly, September through Juneby the
Puget Sound Mycological Society
Center for Urban Horticulture, Box 354115
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195
(206) 522-6031

Agnes A. Sieger, Editor
Dick Sieger, HTML Editor


MEMBERSHIP MEETING

Tuesday, December 10, 1996, at 7:30 PM in the Center for UrbanHorticulture, 3501 N.E. 41st Street, Seattle

Join us for our annual holiday gathering. No business, justeating and socializing. Bring your favorite holiday treat toshare--cookies, finger foods, cheese, or fruits. Please either usea disposable plate or mark your name clearly on your utensil. Thetable decorations and beverages will be provided by PSMS.

Also bring 12 or so slides to share. They need not be mushroomrelated. We’d love to see the fun times you and your familyhave been enjoying. If you have only prints, bring them insomething that we can pass around.

Come, eat, have fun, and enjoy PSMS company!

CALENDAR

Dec. 10 Membership meeting, “cookie bash,” andslide show, 7:30 PM pm, CUH
Dec. 12 Board meeting, 7:30 PM, CUH
Dec. 27 Spore Prints deadline

OCTOBER 19-20 FIELD TRIP Patrice Benson

About 20 eager members joined host Steven Bell for an overnightfield trip. Sixty-seven species of fungi were identified by SaraClark assisted by Larry Baxter and Margaret Dilly.

A dozen or so folks stayed for the potluck, which wasexceptionally good. I especially remember the pastry made by IreneLingat. The weather was superb--conducive to finding mushrooms andenjoying campfires.

PSMS/MOUNTAINEERS FIELD TRIP Colman Leuthy

On October 26 and 27, PSMS again joined The Mountaineers attheir Meany Lodge ski hut for a joint field trip. The days were sunfilled and reasonably warm. When we arrived, 2 to 4 inches of snowcovered much of the open areas, but half of it melted by Sunday,revealing more mushrooms, and as there was little snow in the woodsthe collecting was good. There was no snow in the Easton area. Somespecimens were frozen, or with ice caps, or saturated with water,but in general we had a broad assortment of species in goodcondition. Thanks to the efforts of Sara Clark, Coleman Leuthy,Brian Luther, and Brandon Matheny, 134 species were identified.

Irwin Kleinman, Russ Kurtz, Brandon Matheny, and Harold Schnarreguided the Saturday collecting groups. Brian Luther gave afascinating slide program about Dr. Stuntz and mushrooms, followedby slides and a discussion on postage stamps and cards featuringmushrooms. Lorraine Dod conducted a hands-on lab on cleaning andpreparing mushrooms, which were then included in our meals over theweekend. With improvements in the building, we were able to movethe mushroom display indoors and had the best yet display ofcollections with some warmth and good lighting. A great time washad by all. Join us next year.

ORSON AND HOPE MILLER Patrice Benson

Noted mycologist Dr. Orson K. Miller and his wife, Hope, visitedSeattle last month in conjunction with The Daniel E. StuntzFoundation’s third annual lecture, presented by Dr. Miller atCUH on Tuesday, November 19.

On Saturday, November 16, Dr. Ammirati and his students met theMillers at Pack Forest and journeyed to Mt. Rainier Park’swest side road to collect and benefit from Dr. Miller’scompany. PSMS members joined them at Deception Pass for animpromptu field trip on Sunday, November 17. On Monday, HopeMiller, author of Hope’s Mushroom Cookbook, gave aslide lecture and cooking demonstration at CUH. About 75 peopleattended despite snow warnings, some traveling from Bellingham andSnohomish. The lucky attendees tasted lemon dill soup withchanterelles and Mushroom Dip Especial.

The snow did hit later that night, which limited attendance atthe Stuntz Memorial Lecture the following evening. Approximately 30brave souls ventured out on the snowy roads to hear an excellenttalk on desert fungi by Dr. Miller. The most dedicated travelerawards go to Igor and Ken, who came all the way from Snohomish.(The Society videotaped Dr. Miller’s lecture, and it will beavailable to those who couldn’t make it.) Afterward, weadjourned to The Ram to toast Dr. Stuntz.

FALL FORAY Doug Ward

What started out as a dismal prospect due to the rainy weatherturned out to be a marvelous experience.

Almost 50 members gathered at the camp on the Olympic Peninsulaover the weekend of November 16–18. The mushroom gathering wasnot as productive as we would have liked, but the beautiful weathermore than made up for the lack of baskets full of chanterelles.Only 95 species, about half the number that would normally beexpected from this location, were identified by the identifierstaff headed by Brian Luther. From my perspective, the mostinteresting item was a giant yellow chanterelle collected by DanCorey. It was a good 10 inches across the top, with manysmaller chanterelles growing on the top of the “mother”specimen. (From Brian’s perspective, interesting findsincluded a beautiful collection of the true Russula emetica,Hygrophorus colemannianus, and Lactariusvinaceorufescens—rare in Washington and one of only threespecies of Lactarius in our area that have white latex whichchanges to sulphur yellow before your eyes.)

Those attending were treated to readings from DenisBenjamin’s collection of mushroom-related stories and a mostinteresting slide presentation by Brian Luther on the life andtimes of Dr. Stuntz and early Northwest mycology pioneers. If theseweren’t enough, the experience was rounded out by a trip toBill’s Bog, a nature walk led by Brian, fresh roasted oysters(courtesy of Sara and Geoff Clark), and marvelous meals prepared byMagda and Marsi DiGiovani.

NOVEMBER 2 FIELD TRIP Tom Ahlers

A peculiar bubbling noise came through the fog from a smallcreek near the kitchen shelter as fires crackled in both fireplacesand the coffee brewed. The foggy morning and chilly east windpromised a fine November afternoon while mushroomers met and thenbroke into small groups. Some drove west. Most walked into thehills above the shore. I chased down the noise coming from thecreek. Chum—let me tell you, that creek was full of spawningsalmon! Dark green with red and gold stripes, gnarly doglike teeth,big salmon in a creek so small that their backs broke the surfacewhile their bellies dragged the bottom. The hunters coming back tothe camp for lunch were showing off nice takes of largeCantharellus cibarius, Gomphus clavatus, a fewTricholoma magnivelare, and piles of fungi for the ID table.What a great place for a late season foray!

The hours flew by (so did the salmon), and new groups got togetherfor afternoon trips into the woods. Six of us took a trek to a DNRforest, hooking our ways through the thick stands of huckleberryand wild rhododendron growing in a second growth Douglas firforest. New PSMSer Brigitte Snelling used a little beginner’sluck on her first foray to lead us to a nice fruiting ofCantharellus cibarius, followed by another, then some more!On the way out we found a small patch of Amanitacalyptroderma, an edible and sought-after Amanitapopular in San Francisco but rare north of the Columbia River.It’s always great to find an unfamiliar species, and there issomething especially intriguing about culinary amanitae.

We were without an official identifier back at the ID table, butsoon a small coalition formed to carefully ID many of thespecimens. Interesting species found included Lactariusfragilis, Pseudohydnum gelatinosum, Tricholomaflavovirens, Hydnum repandum, Gomphus floccosus,Laccaria amethystea occidentalis, the ubiquitous Boletuszelleri, Amanita muscaria, Russula brevipes, anda large Sparassis crispa to mention a few.

Many thanks to Irwin Kleinman, Dave Schmidt, Art Fick (from theBremerton club), Bonnie and Ralph Hayford, and all the others whojumped in to ID the fungi.

Six men stayed for a quick potluck featuring Osborne carrotsalad, sweet and sour chicken Tanabe, and Kleinman-Ahlers garlicchanterelles. The sun was down by a little after five, and the lastof us were heading back to town after a fine day.

NOTES OF THIS AND THAT

1997 Banquet: March 14, 1997, Edmonds Community College,Walter Bronowitz chef. Mark your calendars now.

BOTANICAL LATIN Mt. Mazama Mycographia

Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778), the great Swedish botanistwho developed the worldwide binomial nomenclature system in usetoday, was faced with creating an international language, a kind ofbiological Esperanto that would serve to name and describe plants.Linnaeus created this artificial language of biology out of theLatin, a language that had long ceased to be the European languageof learning. His “Botanical Latin” was based not onclassical Latin but on Medieval and Renaissance Latin, which hereshaped for his purpose. He ransacked the Latin language forsuitable terms to describe thousands of plants, sometimes using asingle word to describe a plant’s manner of growth (e.g.,procumbens) and at other times using a word for the habitat orfirst discoverer of the plant, or even Latinizing a form of avernacular word. Linnaeus was not too rigorous in the logic of hisusage, provided the word was distinctive and memorable.Linnaeus’ system has proven its self over the centuries,reaching around the world and making a world community ofnaturalists and biologists. Even the name Karl Von Linne wasLatinized.

MYCENAE Constantine J. Alexopoulos,Introductory Mycology (Wiley, New York, 1962), p. 3

Three and one-half millennia ago, so the legend goes, the Greekhero Perseus, in fulfillment of an oracle, accidentally killed hisgrandfather Acrisius, whom he was to succeed on the throne ofArgos. Then, according to Pausanias, “When Perseus returned toArgos, ashamed of the notoriety of the homicide, he persuadedMegapenthes, son of Proetus, to change kingdoms with him. So whenhe had received the kingdom of Proetus he founded Mycenae, becausethe cap (mykes) of his scabbard had fallen off, and heregarded this as a sign to found a city. I have also heard thatbeing thirsty he chanced to take up a mushroom (mykes) andthat water flowing from it he drank, and being pleased gave theplace the name of Mycenae.”

Thus one of the greatest civilizations that man hasdeveloped—the Mycenean—may have been named for alegendary mushroom.

OBLIVION CALLS Mt. Mazama Mycographia

(ECONEWS, 7/96) Two recent conferences in Britain have concludedthat fungi are disappearing faster than scientists can study them.A declaration by 85 leading mycologists bemoaned loss of habitatfor mushrooms, adding that only 72,000 of the estimated 1.5 millionspecies of fungi in the world have been described.

1996 FUNGAL STATISTICS Joanne Young

This year, 293 different species of fungi were identified anddisplayed at the annual exhibit. Of these, 12 were ascomycetes, 2were fungi imperfecti, and 279 were basidiomycetes. Two slime moldsand 38 species of lichens were also represented. Within thebasidiomycetes, 98 genera were identified. The genera with the mostspecies identified were: Lactarius 19, Cortinarius18, Russula 16, Mycena 12, Tricholoma 11,Amanita 9, Boletus, 8, Suillus 8,Agaricus 7, Clitocybe 7, Lepiota 7,Pholiota 7, Ramaria 7.
How does this compare with other years? From 1976 to 1988, thespecies counts ranged from 257 to 336, so this year was right inthe middle.

Falling in love is like carelessly eating wildmushrooms--you’re never sure it’s the real thing untilit’s too late.

BAKED CHICKEN WITH CEPS AND WHITE-WINE MUSTARD SAUCE

2 lb chicken, breasts or thighs
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 oz. dried Cepes or 8 oz. fresh
1/4 cup Obester sauvignon blanc garlic mustard
1/4 C dry white wine
1 tsp dried thyme
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 C grated Parmesan cheese
Paprika

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. If using dried Ceps, reconstitutein 2 C warm water. (Save the water for stock, add to soups, etc.)Place chicken, skin side up, in a buttered baking dish. Sprinklewith minced garlic. Cover with sliced Ceps. Combine Obestermustard, white wine, and thyme; pour over chicken and mushrooms.Top with pepper, Parmesan, and paprika.

Cover and bake for 30 min. Uncover and bake another 20-30 minuntil juices run clear and top is lightly browned. Serves 4.

Winter has come,
And the ground is white.
The mushrooms fled,
No more in sight.
They sleep beneath
The frozen earth
And wait for spring
To bring rebirth.

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