BULLETIN OF THE PUGET SOUND MYCOLOGICALSOCIETY
Number 342, May 1998
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, May 12, at 7:30 pm at the Center for UrbanHorticulture, 3501 NE 41st Street, Seattle.
Please join us for a presentation by botanist Dr. David Pilzfrom the USDA Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest ResearchStation in Corvallis, Oregon, on “The MAB ChanterelleStudy—Biological, Socio-Economic, and Managerial Aspects ofHarvesting Chanterelles on the Olympic Peninsula”
During 1994 and 1995, members of the Puget Sound MycologicalSociety participated in the MAB chanterelle study by assisting with biological fieldinventories of chanterelle productivity and by answeringquestionnaires about recreational chanterelle harvesting. Theprincipal investigators wish to acknowledge the society’s helpin the research project by presenting an award and results from thestudy. Principal investigators who may attend include David Pilz, abotanist (USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station)studying the productivity and sustainable harvest of wild ediblemushrooms; Leon Liegel, a research forester (USDA Forest Service,Pacific Northwest Research Station), who organized and spearheadedthe MAB study; and Tom Love, a professor (Linnfield College,McMinnville, OR) who coordinated the sociological portion of theMAB study.
Would persons with last names beginning with the lettersW–Z or A–D, please bring refreshments for the socialhour?
CALENDAR
May 9 Field trip
May 11 Basic ID class for people who have registered
May 12 Membership meeting, 7:30 pm, CUH
May 15 Spore Prints deadline (a week early)
May 16–17 Field trip
May 18 Board meeting
May 23 Field trip
May 29–June 1 Field trip
June 5–6 Field trip
June 9 Membership meeting, 7:30 pm, CUH
BOARD NEWS Agnes Sieger
Lisa Bellefond is replacing Brandon Matheny as Education Chair.Ron Pyeatt will host the May 9th field trip from his cabin about amile away. Direction signs will be posted. Dick Sieger demonstratedwhat he has on his laptop computer. Steve Bell will put together aprice package for a laptop to go out of the office and into thefield. Jim Berlstein will price a computer housekeeping combinationfor the office. More rosters will be available at the May meeting.After that they will be mailed. There are no volunteers as yet tochair the picnic. Lynne Elwell and Lynn Phillips will take overvideo-taping the programs after taking lessons from Corey.
MEET JOY SPURR Inga Wilcox
A charter member and the first recipient of the PSMS GoldenMushroom Award, Joy Spurr is a doer. As a professional naturephotographer, she had no trouble including photography of fungi inher repertoire of wildflowers, birds, and plants. Together with BenWoo, she started a photograph file for the Society which sherecently reorganized together with an inventory list. Her own filecontains more than 700 species.
When Joy came out from Minnesota in the 1940s, she took classeswith Dr. Stuntz and especially enjoyed the summer classes attendedby members of PSMS where long-term friendships were formed. Theoriginal Stuntz/McKenny and Ammirati editions of The Savory WildMushroom include her photographs. She served on the PSMS MorelCommittee and remembers field trips where ground temperatures weretaken by pushing a thermometer 8 inches down into the groundand soil samples were taken for analysis.
Joy travels extensively, combining enjoyment with professionalphotography. She has been to all continents and most recentlyvisited India, Peru, Western China, Central Asia, Syria, Jordan,and Ethiopia. She feels that animal life and photography areespecially great in Africa and Antarctica. She uses Nikon cameraswith three lenses (28–80 zoom, 75–300 zoom, and 60 macro)and Kodachrome film. Currently, she is working on photos for a newfield guide for trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and geology to beissued by the National AudubonSociety. Her nature photos appear in various media throughoutthe world.
She also does photography for the Arboretum Foundation, and twotitles featuring her work have been published through that society.When Pacific Search magazine came out, it included herphotos as well as articles. Naturally, Joy likes to pick mushrooms.She especially enjoys the whitechanterelle and Boletus edulis. She finds mushrooming aneasier hobby than rockhounding. Rocks and crystals are heavy andtake up space. Mushrooms disappear into the frying pan! You canmeet Joy at forays, especially in the Taneum Creek and TeanawayRiver areas in the spring, when she might help at theidentification table.
What pleases her most? “My happiest days are when I canjust be outdoors looking for mushrooms, wildflowers, and wildanimals and enjoying the natural treasures in our beautifulState.”
Notice: After eight years of interviewing members andwriting their profiles, I am laying down my pen. I hope someonemight pick it up and continue. A big “thank you” to allof you who shared a bit of your life with all of us atPSMS—Inga Wilcox
APRIL 10 FIELD TRIP Doug Ward
We arrived at the park at about 10:00 am in the middle of adownpour. A little while later, we were joined by five new membersat shelter Al. Needless to say, the weather remained horrible butwe did venture out briefly between the torrents. The result of ourall-to-short foray into the nearby cottonwoods was nothing to bragabout, in fact, it was nothing! Apparently, a couple of members hadarrived on the scene before we did and left one over-the-hillpuffball (identity unknown) and one fairly soggy and mangled“LBM.” But the day was not lost. We sighted one baldeagle, one Oregon junco, a group of pine siskins, one wren, and abufflehead (a small black and white duck). In addition, we had adelightful potluck lunch and conversations about Fall and Springmushrooms and the wisdom of only eating a small amount of mushroomsone has never tried before, which was verified by a couple ofpersonal experiences that were not so good. Another good outcomewas that one of! the new members volunteered to help host the nextfield trip. Lets hope the weather is better on May 2!
MUSHROOM ASTROLOGY Bob Lehman, LAMS
Taurus (Apr. 20–May 20): You enjoy the aesthetic andsensual qualities of mushrooms—their forms, colors, textures,aromas, and flavors—and you can prepare tasty dishes from theedible ones. You insistently search for particular species thatmeet your qualifications, although you also may fill your basketwith mushrooms that you never use. You like the idea of living offthe land and not having to pay for your food. You are protectiveabout your favorite hunting places.
THE MOREL STORY Kitsap Peninsula Myco. Soc.
May is Morel Month! A good time to dust off this localarticle, slightly updated and augmented, which has been languishingin my “someday” file for far too long. Unfortunately, Idon’t have an author.—A.A.S.
Description
True morels have hollow caps and hollow stems. The stems are normally white butmay be slightly yellowish. The stems connect to the bottom edge ofthe cap on all except M. semilibera, where the stem extendspartly up into the cap. The caps have irregular indentations, whichare characteristic of morels. Gyromitra mushrooms, sometimes called false morels, havecaps with folds and wrinkles that differentiate them from the truemorel.
Distribution
Morels are one of the most widely distributed mushrooms,flourishing in temperature regions around the world across Europe,Asia, and North America. In the U.S. they can be found from coastto coast and from the Canadian border south, petering out abouthalfway between Washington, D.C., and the Gulf of Mexico, althoughthey are occasionally found as far south as Louisiana.
Season
In most of the United States, May is considered morel month,although the season advances from south to north, with April beingthe peak season in Maryland. In the Pacific Northwest, the seasonusually peaks in the last 2 weeks of May on the east side of theCascades, although morels may begin showing up as early as the endof February in the lowlands. The season may shift a week or twodepending on the temperature. It also varies with altitude and ondifferent sides of a mountain.
Location
One location that most of us forget to remember is our ownback yard. Since morels appear in the low lands first, this givesus an early start. Morels can grow in your lawn, in the wood mulchunder the rhododendrons, along hedges, and in old fruit orchards.The quantities may not equal what we hope to find in the Cascadesbut it is a good preseason location. The best picking areas are onthe east side of the Cascade Mountains. Locations of forest fires can yield unbelievably large quantities thefollowing spring. Morels seem to become adaptive to certain areas.They may be found by elm trees in one state and by oaks inanother.
Here, morels may be found anywhere. They may grow near treesin conifer forests, in open flat grass land, in bare dirt areas, orout of needle duff. If the season is dry, it may pay to look ingullies and other areas of water runoff and under logs or littletree seedlings whose shade may have saved moisture for themushroom. Yet, the most dense fruiting of morels that I have everseen was in a large clear-cut area where the stumps were pulled andthe weather was hot. This all leads me to believe that morels growanywhere they feel like growing.
The Hunt
Morels tend to blend into the surrounding area. It is always hardto find the first mushroom each year. The eye has to get accustomedto separating the morel from its background. You have to learn towalk a few steps, then stop to look, and you may be surprised tosee morels that seem to magically appear and grow before your eyes.Once you find a morel, stop and look around. Start walking aroundit a small circle, increasing the radius out to maybe 75 ft.Sometimes that will lead you right into a river of morels. Morelsneed moisture and warmth to grow, so early in the season look onsouth-facing slopes; later in the season, look on north-facingslopes.
Edibility
All fresh and prime morels are considered edible and very good, buta warning does exist. Never eat these mushrooms raw. Also, a fewpeople have an allergy to this mushroom even after cooking, so eatonly a little the first time and wait at least a day before eatingmore.
Preservation
The most convenient way to preserve morels is to cut each in halfand dry. They can be threaded on a string to air dry and laterstored in a sealed fruit jar. Dried morels are reduced to about onetenth of their fresh weight and will store for long periods of timeif completely dry. In damp weather, this may require the use of anelectric food dryer that can keep the temperature at100–125°F and has a small fan to circulate air. Somepeople add a bay leaf to each sealed jar. Morels can also besautéed just long enough to stop enzyme action and thenplaced in sealed freezer bags before freezing. Larger quantitiescan be processed more quickly by parboiling whole morels to stopthe enzyme action and sealing them in bags or jars for freezing.These mushrooms can then be stuffed and baked later. Wholemushrooms will not keep over long periods without deterioration andshould be used within a year.
DID A MUSHROOM TAINT YOUR WINE? Jeff Long, PotomacSporophore (3/98) via Mycelium, Myco. Soc. of Toronto(3-4/98)
Armillaria mellea and Quercus suber? Yes, it’s very possible that thelast time you had a bottle of wine that was “corked,” orafflicted with a musty odor and/or a woody, funky taste, a honeymushroom was the culprit. The world’s cork production comesfrom a regenerative layer, the cambium, of the oak tree known asQuercus suber. About every decade or so, starting from theage of 30 to 40 years, the bark (also regenerative) of this speciesof oak tree is removed, and the cambium layer is stripped from thetree. These cork boards are then left outside approximately
6 months to season. Thereafter, the boards are processed, and mostof the wine corks with which we are familiar are punched out,classified, washed, polished, and branded.
Although a cork can also be affected by off-odors picked upduring later processing from products used to sterilize corks, manywine and cork experts believe that Armillaria mellea, thehoney mushroom, is the main culprit. This fungus is prone to attacktrees growing in soil with poor drainage, humidity being itspreferred element, but it typically affects the bark and cambiumlayer only to a height of about a foot up from the ground. Althoughthat part of the cork layer on the tree should not be used formaking corks, the piece-workers who typically strip the cambiumlayer even go so far as to strip that layer underground in order toget more cork board.
Despite the seasoning and sterilizing that take placethereafter, a problem may occur when the finished cork is placed inthe filled bottle of wine, as the cork then is normally in contactwith the wine. Since the surface of the cork consists of anenormous number of cells that have been cut in the punch-outprocess, the cork’s surface contact with its immediateenvironment is much greater than that of a perfectly smoothsurface. Each microscopic cork cell is a microcontainer, and corkeasily takes odors from its environment. Unfortunately, the wine inmost bottles of wine is similarly susceptible to adulteration orcontamination. To the bane of wine producers almost everywhere, alltoo frequently this results in “corked” wines. Although adish containing honey mushrooms may be fine to consume with yourfavorite bottle of merlot or chardonnay, the same wine with itsproblematic cork may already have had an unhappy encounter with thesame mushroom!
A LOOK BEHIND THE NAMES Richard Aaron,Mycelium, Myco. Soc. of Toronto, April–June 1998
Spring is here, and most foragers’ fancies turn to thoughtsof morels. The true morels are in the genus Morchella, aname that first appeared in the scientific literature almost threecenturies ago, in 1719. Given its vintage, it is not surprisingthat the name’s origins have since been lost. However, manytheories abound. One source claims it was derived from an oldGerman word for morel. Another believes it was based on a name usedfor centuries for some mushroom found in central and northernEurope, identity unknown. Yet another theory has the name derivedfrom the genus for mulberries, Morus, since morels resemblethose fruits. While the issue may never be resolved, it isinteresting to note how many European languages share a wordsimilar to our English “morel.” A polyglot dictionary ofmushroom names I consulted revealed the following: morchella(Bulgarian), morkel (Danish), motile (French),morchel (German! ), morielje (Dutch), and ektemorkel (Norwegian).
We face one additional problem with the genusMorchella—exactly how many species are there? Over theyears, more than 100 species have been described, but it is nowgenerally believed there are less than a dozen bona fide ones. Theproblem is that no one has written a definitive monograph on thegenus, and many authors stress that much work remains to be done.To keep things manageable, the list below has been limited to namescommon to many of the popular field guides.
M. angusticeps = angustus (narrow) + ceps(head)
M. conica = conicus (conical)
M. crassipes = crassus (thick, dense, fat, heavy) +pes (foot)
M. deliciosa = deliciosus (delicious)
M. elata = elatus (raised up, brought forth, spring up;extol)
M. esculenta = esculentus (edible)
M. semilibera = semi (half) + liber (free)
Most of the definitions are self-explanatory, with twoexceptions. Elatus has numerous definitions, some of whichhave been provided above. Perhaps the mycologist who coined thisname in the early 1800s was stressing that this species is one ofthe first things to “pop up” each spring. Or it could behe was praising this species as a fine edible. As with the meaningof Morchella, educated guessing is in order here.Semilibera (half-free) is much easier to decipher. The namerefers to the unique attachment of the cap. In all other morels,the cap is fused to the stalk, but in M. semilibera, the bottom half of the cap drapes freely like askirt.
The dictionary reveals some interesting connections to theroot words above. For instance, from the Latin crassus, we get theword “crass,” meaning “without refinement orsensitivity.” Literally, a thick, dense person! And elatus isthe basis for “elated,” to be “in highspirits,” in the sense of being raised up. From esculentus, weget a word less commonly used, but in the dictionary nonetheless.“Esculent,” used as an adjective means “suitable foruse as food” and as a noun means “something edible,especially a vegetable.” Finally, starting with liber we getsuch words as “liberal,” “liberty,” and“libertarian.” Don’t confuse liber with anotherLatin word, libra, which means “pound,” usually writtenas the abbreviated “lb.”
So next time you go into the woods to fill your basket withthese springtime lovelies, give a thought to the meanings behindtheir names. It may help you understand the mushrooms a bit more,and it will certainly expand your vocabulary. Who knows, instead ofa field guide, you may start carrying a dictionary!
AN ODDBALL FUNGUS Duff (9/97) via Mycolog(11/97)
In the salt marshes of the North Carolina coast lies a funguscapable of propagating itself by shooting a “blob ofjelly” when moistened. While it is nothing new for a fungus tofire off spores mechanically, this fungus, Clomerobalusgelineus, is not firing off spores, but rather a vegetativepiece of itself called a propagule. The propagule is surrounded bythree or four knobs which swell when moistened, causing the centerpropagule to pop out. It can fly out at least a foot. If it landson dead plant tissue, it sinks in mycelium and continues to grow.This “splitting fungus” was discovered by Jan and BrigitteKohlmeyer of the University of North Carolina and represents anew genus.
OOPS: Mushroom kits distributed at the Los AngelesMycological Society mushroom fair began sprouting, not Pleurotus,but a species of Hohenbuehelia. The supplier of the mushroom spawn is beingcontacted.