The Colorado Mycological Society has kindly asked James and I to do a foray for the club this Sunday. We will be searching for the often difficult to find Morchella esculenta, popularly known as the Golden or Blonde Morel. This year has been a very interesting year for weather for the front range of Colorado, and due to our great but late rains, the morel season so far has been very hit and miss. Some of the only areas we are finding them held their moisture during the drier part of early May. It is our assumption that this is why they were only in a few areas this year. However, Michael Kuo has a very good section of his book Morels about what he refers to as ‘Morel Theorizing’ where he pokes fun at much of morel hunter ‘science’ and discusses some of the leading ‘theories’ and morel know-how. If you haven’t already, purchase a copy of his book; it is a wealth of information. So, to make a long story shorter, we have no idea if we are going to see blonde morels this weekend. But I know we will have fun looking for (and theorizing about) this amazing fungi.

If you would like to attend this foray, we will be meeting in the Safeway parking lot on 28th and Arapahoe in Boulder Sunday May 22nd @ 9am. If you are a member of the Colorado Mycological Society the foray is free, non-members must make a $5 donation to Colorado Mycological Society. It is well worth it! Support your local mycological society!

This month, Dr Cathy Cripps will be visiting the Colorado Mycological Society to give a lecture on Montana’s fungi. Dr Cathy Cripps is an associate professor at Montana State University where she teaches Biology, Mycology and the Ecology of Fungi. She completed her PhD with Orson Miller at VPI on aspen fungi. Her current research is on Arctic-Alpine fungi and she is also examining how inoculation of seedlings with native mycorrhizal fungi can help restore whitebark and limber pine forests. She has numerous publications on Rocky Mountain fungi and edited “Fungi in Forest Ecosystems” and the newly published “Arctic-alpine Mycology 8” (online at North American Fungi). Cathy has collected in Colorado and Montana for most of her life and looks forward to sharing information on mushrooms in the Northern Rocky Mountains with her Southern Rocky Mountain friends! If you are interested in attending her lecture, visit the Colorado Mycological Society website for information on CMS meetings!