Going through the day's finds at the January 2006 MycoBlitz. Photo © David Rust
In addition to the many BAMS participants, we had representatives from The Mycological Society of San Francisco (MSSF), Sonoma County Mycological Association (SOMA), Humboldt State University, University of California Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Harvard! Our Harvard colleagues were Dr. Anne Pringle, delighted by the abundance of Amanita phalloides in the field, a graduate student and a postdoc from her lab, and an NPR reporter who was traveling with them.
I hunted with Ben Wolfe, a Harvard grad student ecologist, and Brian Perry, currently with SFSU, and a Harvard alumnus. We had a great time collecting mushrooms in mixed habitat, despite the pouring rain. Besides David Rust and I, other folks who graciously offered to take groups out into the field were Peter Werner, Ron Pastorino, Terry Sullivan, J.R. Blair, and Darvin DeShazer, who introduced his students to the joys of hunting mushrooms in the rain!
Once we returned to the Bear Valley Visitor Center, our fabulous pool of taxonomists got to work. Darvin DeShazer was an invaluable resource for the rare and unusual mushrooms. Dr. Else Vellinga was in high ID mode, and swept from table to table, intent upon her work. Dr. Terry Henkel made the long trip down from Humboldt Sate with a number of his students, and made a nice addition to our crew. Both Dr. Tom Bruns and Dr. John Taylor from UC Berkeley were there, and J.R. Blair from SFSU. We managed to do a thorough presort and some on-the-spot identification prior to the mushrooms being transported to UC Berkeley. A number of fine taxonomists, including Dr. Dennis Desjardin from SFSU, chose to eschew the field portion and show up for the hard work of identification at Berkeley on Sunday. And of course, members of the Pt. Reyes staff were also present, cooperative and collegial, especially Ben Becker, our primary liaison with the Park. Although Ben referred to BAMS as the lead club several times on Saturday, I hastened to correct him that in fact the Mycoblitz was a cooperative venture between all of the Northern California clubs; working together, we can make a difference.
Special thanks to SOMA for donating funds to allow us to purchase coffee and goodies for the crowd, and extra special thanks to my husband David Rust and Tom Bruns for organizing the blitz and making it all possible. We "serious" mycologists (both amateur and professional) were also joined by several newly "be-mushroomed" members of the public, and even folks from local California Native Plant Society chapters attended.