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OfflineWingman4l7
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Point Reyes fair puts the 'fun' back in fungi
    #7940742 - 01/27/08 03:01 PM (16 years, 5 days ago)

Point Reyes fair puts the 'fun' back in fungi

http://www.marinij.com/westmarin/ci_8079671

To mycologist Tom Bruns, the recent discovery of three types of mushrooms in the Point Reyes National Seashore is less a scientific triumph than the opening chapter of a mystery.
"On the back side of a log, we discovered some purple spores," said Bruns, an expert in fungi at the University of California at Berkeley. "The only other known fungus in that genus is from Australia, and the genus itself hadn't been reported from California before. We don't know what it does or much else about it."

Researchers found the three new mushrooms during last month's "mycoblitz," an annual event in which more than 100 fungus fans search for spores and slime along the seashore. The Bay Area Mycological Society will present the results of that survey, as well as other information about local fungi, during Sunday's Point Reyes Fungus Fair at 11 a.m. at the Bear Valley Visitor Center near Olema.

"In this third annual fungal foray, we've gone from identifying 110 species in the seashore to 440," said John Dell'Osso, chief of interpretation at the national seashore.

Mushroom hunting is a popular pastime in many parts of the world, including Eastern Europe, Italy and parts of Asia. But it's been slow to catch on in the United States, partly because of the well-founded fear that what looks like a delicious Porcini mushroom could turn out to be a poisonous toadstool.
"My specialty, the amanita genus of mushroom, includes some of the best edible species worldwide, as well as some of the deadliest mushrooms," said Debbie Viess, co-founder of the Bay Area Mycological Society. "The trick is knowing which is which. Unfortunately, it can be a 'one trial' learning process."

Viess and others hope that events like Sunday's Fungus Fair will help more Americans overcome their fears and appreciate the fungus among them.

"We don't have a culture where we've been steeped in it from birth, as is true of many Eastern European cultures. So it takes a little more effort on our part," Viess said. "We can't do it intuitively; we have to learn. But there are a lot of resources on the West Coast."

To those who study them, mushrooms are more than just a pizza topping - or a deadly poison. The wonder drug penicillin comes from a fungus, as does the transplant aid cyclosporin and several compounds used in treating high cholesterol. Other types of fungi are essential to the growth of trees.

"Fungi, in very indirect ways, are the base for much of our terrestrial ecosystems," Bruns said. "Trees like Douglas fir, coastal live oak and Bishop pine are dependent on fungal symbiotes in their roots."

On the other hand, non-native fungi like sudden oak death and pitch canker have wreaked havoc in local forests, Bruns said, and many allergy sufferers can point their fingers at fungal mold as the source of their grief.

Yet researchers still know little about the fungi beneath our feet. Even in an area as thoroughly canvassed as the Point Reyes National Seashore, Bruns estimates that mycologists have only identified 20 percent of the available species.

"Some mushrooms don't come up every year, or even every 10 years," Viess said. "For some species, it can be 15 or 20 years between fruitings. Your seeing that mushroom depends on your being in that particular place within a two- or three-day window. So it's very exciting to be able to go out and discover."

By studying the fungi collected during the yearly "mycoblitzes," Bruns and other researchers hope to be able to identify mushrooms even when they can't be seen.

"Fruiting may be seasonal, but if you bore into wood or dig up the soil, the fungi are out there year-round," Bruns said. "We just can't identify them. But once we sequence them, we can pick apart their ecologies and natural histories more readily and get a better idea of what we're seeing."

Bruns is trying to determine how a bright orange wood decay fungus that had only been identified in Southern California could have appeared hundreds of miles away in Point Reyes.

"Mycologists," said Viess, "get excited about some pretty odd things."

IF YOU GO

The third annual Point Reyes Fungus Fair will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at the Bear Valley Visitor Center on Bear Valley Road, half a mile west of Olema. For more information, call 464-5100.


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OfflineAlan RockefellerM
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Re: Point Reyes fair puts the 'fun' back in fungi [Re: Wingman4l7]
    #7945310 - 01/28/08 01:17 PM (16 years, 4 days ago)

The shroomery sent some representatives:

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/7943865#7943865

The fair was psilocybe-free until another member who requests anonymity showed up and put some Psilocybe cyanofriscosa's on the display table.


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