With the 2012 season finally coming to a close, let’s take a look back on all of this year’s happenings. As usual, Amateur Mycology was extremely busy with all of our usual projects this summer. We were also booked most of the season with Mycotours, our sister company, that provides private guided mushroom foraging with expert guides in beautiful locations across the United States. On these tours, guests learn to identify and use wild mushrooms and plants, all while exploring these outdoor locations. These hikes usually range from a walk in town, to a strenuous hike through the mountains, with an emphasis on the ecosystem’s flora. We also offer cook and tastes and lunch on a private chef basis. For more information on our tours, or to schedule an expedition, visit Mycotours.com.

Amateur Mycology attended the 2012 Telluride Mushroom Festival again this year, and all of our seminars were a major success. Bert Matthews, James Weiser, and I gave hands on demonstrations in our mobile laboratory  and did several classes about various sterile lab techniques. This also included cloning many of the mushrooms from the identification table as well! Bert also exhibited his Pleurotus mushroom sculptures to all of the class attendees. I gave a lecture entitled, “Mycophagy: the culture of eating fungi” in the Elks Lodge this year. I covered several interesting topics including information about many of the different types of edible mushrooms from around the world and their cultural uses, as well as delved into the many aspects of fermentation with fungi. We talked about fermentation with the fungi molds, but also talked about using the macro fungi to ferment food products as well (I will be writing an article about this topic soon). We also discussed the many meanings of the word ‘culture’, and how ‘cultures of fungi’ have shaped many human ‘cultures’ across the world.  Lecture attendees also got to look at various fungi growing on petri dishes that I brought with me that are used to ferment food products. These included Aspergillus oryzae (koji/miso/sake), Penicillium roqueforti (blue cheese), Rhizopus oligosporus (tempeh), and Penicillium camemberti (brie/Camembert). Mycotours also competed in the Annual Mushroom Chef Cook-off with our Porcini Sushi Roll with Porcini sauce. It was mentioned in Alisa Geiser’s blog article ‘The Curious Ways We Find Eachother: Day Two at the Telluride Mushroom Festival’ on elephantjournal.com. You can read more about the mushroom cook-off at TellurideInside.com or The Telluride Festivarian. For more information on this year’s Telluride Mushroom Festival, or for info about the event in 2013, visit shroomfest.com. You can also listen to an interview with Scott, the director of the festival on the new radio show I am working on called ‘A Fermented Affair‘! You can find it here, on BlogTalkRadio.com. You can also find Telluride Mushroom Festival and A Fermented Affair on Facebook!

I also presented at Syntonic Music Festival that featured over 40 different electronic music artists and about 20 workshops. I gave a lecture entitled ‘Introduction to Fungi’ where we discussed how mushrooms can be used for more than just a great side dish in a meal, they could maybe help save the planet!! For more information about the 2012 Syntonic workshops or the music artists visit their website at syntonicfest.com.

As always, stay tuned for more pictures and video of these events and information to the upcoming events Amateur Mycology is working on.

James and I just got back on the 7th of September from the Radical Mycology Convergence 2011. One of the organizers of the event got on the local short wave radio station, KOWA, in Olympia, WA yesterday to talk about the RMC and plans for the future. Check out the interview below. A written report of the RMC to come soon. Stay tuned.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Visit http://radicalmycology.wordpress.com/ for more information!!

James and I have been incredibly busy recently with our many, many projects. Unfortunately for you guys, that means we have been MIA from our blog! Well, don’t worry. That is all about to change. While searching for black morels, which have been mostly non-existent this year, we stumbled into some very interesting fungi growing along the snowbanks.

Now for all of you who have never been to the Rocky Mountains looking for mushrooms in June, many unique fungi appear during this time of year around 9,000-10,000 feet in elevation. As our early summer temperatures skyrocket, snow begins to melt quite rapidly, creating many seasonal streams and tons of water runoff. This is also the period in which black morels begin to show up, soaking up all of the water rushing down the mountains. However, this year was abnormally cool in our upper elevations, causing the spring season to progress slowly. The aspen trees, which leaf out when morels like to fruit, have already been showing their leaves for almost 2 weeks now. This is true all the way up to 10,000 feet in elevation. However, Calypso Orchids, strawberries, Osha, and other ‘signal’ plants are barley beginning to grow. Bill Windsor, who is a long-time member of the Colorado Mycological Society and a Colorado black morel expert, informed many at the recent foray about these issues. These signal plants show to many of us who hunt morels that the ground temperature stayed too cool for too long. Bill mentioned that his black morel spots are barley fruiting if at all, and that in many areas of Colorado, the window of opportunity to find morels is coming to a close.

As I mentioned above, June is when our snow begins its melt off period, and even if we don’t have many morels in June, this moisture bank that comes surging down the mountains sustains many types of interesting fungi. The pictures below this post were all taken this year, and show the mushrooms that I am about to talk about.

The fungi that is pictured at the top of the post as well as below, is the very common, but none the less beautiful, Guepiniopsis alpinus, also known as the Golden Jelly Cone. This unique fungi can be found fruiting from dead wood, and like the other fungi, is found in areas where a snow bank has just receded or next to a snow bank where the water is melting into the ground. Their jelly like texture and bright golden color make it easy to identify.

The next photo is the largest of the snowbank fungi. Hygrophorus alpinus is a stately mushroom with bright white flesh. It has gills that are decurrent (running down the stem) and a mucus-like veil when young. Their stem tends to be rather bulbous at the base. This fungi is also an edible mushroom! It is actually one of the only Hygrophorus in Colorado that is known to be an edible species. James and I cooked some of them up just in butter and olive oil, salt and pepper. They had a very unique flavor, but to me, a slightly slug-like texture. I think if you cooked them until they were crispy, they would actually be quite delicious.

The last picture is of the very common Caloscypha fulgens. It is distinguished by its fairly uniform, cup-like shape, its ‘hunter orange’ hue, and the blue staining around its underside. These fungi tend to be found growing in conifer duff in open areas. They are so bright in color that they almost look like trash at first glance.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the photos of these strange fungi. Check back with us soon for pictures of our Pink Oysters that have fruited beautifully, as well as our standard Pleurotus pulmonarius that has fruited quite nicely as well.

We will be hosting a foray this weekend with our friends from the Arkansas Valley Mushroom Club on Saturday, June 12th. The fearless leader of AVMC, Irv Broudy was kind enough to ask us to lead an expedition into the high country to look for snow melt fungi and hopefully find some black morels! We will be gathering at the campground at the top of Kenosha Pass at 10 am and will be driving to our final hunting grounds. If you live in the Salida area, meet at 8:00am at Stop and Shop parking lot in town. For all the folks out in Buena Vista, meet at 8:30 at City Market in case there are people there who need a ride. Since it is a pretty long distance to Kensosha Pass, let’s try and maximize carpooling and chip in for gas for those who drive. If you are coming from Denver and would like to carpool or need directions to the meeting spot, shoot me an email at graham@amateurmycology.com and we will coordinate from there.

Weather conditions have been dry, so it’s likely that we will be looking for shrooms near or at the snow-melt zone, so dress accordingly and bring a lunch. James and I have recently found a few black morels, oysters, and many other snow melt fungi. We have been scouting and will select a specific location to hunt by Saturday. Hope to see you there!

As far as we know… which of course isn’t a whole heck of a lot (you are visiting Amateur Mycology after all) we are the first to find blonde morels in Colorado this year. We have video evidence for those of you who do not believe, which we will be posting soon along with pictures! They were found at about 5,000-5,500′ in elevation yesterday. The soil temperature was ranging from 49-53 degrees F in the areas they were found (we for some reason can’t remember exactly where). We are using fairly cheap digital candy thermometers to read the soil temperatures around the general area, as well as directly in the vicinity of the mushrooms. So for all of you in Colorado, hope for a little rain and get out there looking! I think we got a little rain this afternoon….

Now that we have received our spring rains, the Colorado mushroom season has begun. I have seen quite a few Coprinus comatus around the city, but if you look in your local riparian areas you may come across the infamous oyster mushroom, Pleurotus pulmonarius in most cases, growing on dead or dying deciduous trees and stumps. Pleutotus pulmonarius is the most common species in lower elevations, favoring cottonwood trees. Colorado also has a couple other species, Pleurotus populinus probably being the next most well known. It is found growing on aspen and has more delicate ‘shelves’. Another species, Pleurotus dryinus has also been found in Colorado. It is usually has less of a clustering habit, longer and larger stems, a mostly centrally attached stem and a very distinctive cap. All oyster mushrooms have a very distinctive shape, sometimes growing in fans that are shaped closely to an oyster shell. They also are known to have a slight shellfish odor, making the common name ‘oyster mushroom’ very fitting.
To make sure you have a Pleurotus species take a spore print. Put a mature mushroom cap on a piece of white paper and with your finger, moisten the cap with a little bit of water. Then put a glass over top of it to reduce air flow around the cap so the spores fall off of the gills and onto the paper. Leave it over night until the next morning. You should be left with a gray or gray/lilac spore print.
James and I have been finding quite a few oysters out already, as the weather is permitting them to fruit. They are just beginning as most of the logs we know have large amounts of mushrooms have yet to show major signs of fruiting. Nonetheless, there are still pounds of mushrooms already out and ready for picking!
Below is a gallery featuring some of the oyster mushrooms we have found in the past few days. Bert, the newest member of Amateur Mycology is shown above with a particularly large cluster of Pleurotus pulmonarius I found on a cottonwood stump yesterday in Boulder. He brought us to a couple other oyster mushroom spots as that were very interesting! Stay tuned for an Amateur Mycology Video Magazine episode featuring our early oyster hunts!
P.S. No morels seen yet, but we will keep you posted. Still to early.

The last Saturday in April in the small Nebraska town of Peru, there is a gathering of people from across the country all hunting for one mushroom… the elusive culinary delight, the Blonde Morel! James and I have plans to visit this festival, film our trip there and back, and plan on hunting the Morel the whole way! Our trip will start here in Colorado, but we plan on driving there because we will be following the Platte River almost the whole way there! For those of you who haven’t hunted Blonde Morels before, that means we are driving past Morel habitat during the entire drive! If you would like to visit the Great Nebraska Mushroom Hunt visit their website, www.nebraskathegoodlife.com for a schedule, driving directions, as well as any other information about the festival. And if you can’t make it and wish you could, check back soon for a full episode of Amateur Mycology Video Magazine all about this trip. Hope all is well out there, and if you are in Colorado and haven’t already, get out there and start looking! There is fungal life about!

Yesterday, James went out and found a Polyporus squamosus, the dryad’s saddle, fresh and still in button stage. In February we found some Flammulina velutipes fruiting on our oyster and enoki stump in Littleton, however, also known as the winter mushroom, Flammulina velutipes can be found in almost every month of the year. This morning I went out to my earliest Coprinus comatus spot in the front yard, and sure enough, there were 4 mushrooms! Now 4 mushrooms may not be very many, and this particular spot is watered by the sprinklers in the mornings. But every year they pop up in this spot, mushroom season has officially begun. If you search wetter areas, in particular places in the city where they have just turned on the sprinklers, you should have a good chance of seeing some fungal life. Pleurotus, Flammulina, Coprinus, and maybe few Agaricus should be around. Another good place to start looking is around creeks and rivers along wetter areas, especially spots with a good seepage. We will keep you updated on the progression of the Colorado season as it goes along. Morels should be popping up within the next month, along with all of our early spring fungi. If you haven’t already, check out my post on Morel habitat for more information. Asparagus should also start sprouting up soon as well! Good luck out there and happy spring!

The guys over at Kauai Fungi were kind enough to donate 2 petri dishes of Pleurotus djamor, the Pink Oyster Mushroom, to us here at Amateur Mycology for the Amateur Mycology Culture Library. Saturday they arrived in the mail! We quickly made sure they were not sitting in the mail box too long, as it is still very cold here in Colorado, and Pleurotus djamor is known to have mycelial die-back if temperatures go below 60 degrees F. This also brings up the question as to how you keep these tropical mushrooms in cold storage. We will ask Kauai Fungi this week and give you all an update.

If you look at the picture above, you will see a close up of the mycelial growth of the Pink Oyster, which to our surprise, was bright pink!! Dana said it looks like Pepto, and I would have to entirely agree. Interestingly, when I took pieces of it out in the laboratory and transfered them into test tubes, I noticed that it stains the agar that same bright pink! What an interesting fungi.

Now for those of you who do not know what this mushroom is for, James and I went to the Denver Botanic Gardens and spoke to the curator of the tropical plants at the gardens, who is in charge of the plants inside the glass conservatory/ atrium that houses most of the tropical plant specimens. He voiced interest in growing fungi inside this tropical environment, and James and I jumped on the project the first chance we got. When we met and talked about the project, and he explained how he would like tropical species of mushrooms if they were to be displayed inside the conservatory, and lucky for us we already had connections to Kauai Fungi in Hawaii. Despite his enthusiastic response to the idea, the Pink Oyster will not be displayed inside the DBG’s conservatory using our techniques. However, we have other botanic gardens who are interested. We are also developing other species of mushroom for display, but more research is needed.  Check back soon for more information!

Our trip was a blast. It was very nice to be looking for mushrooms so early in the year compared to what we are used to out here in Colorado. However, the drought conditions in Texas made searching for them a little more difficult than in years previous. We learned that last year’s Morel season was the best they had seen in 15 years. Had we known this, we would have probably waited to go out to Texas until a different year to look for Morels specifically. So we switched gears and searched for city mushrooms in heavily watered areas. This technique gave us some good success. We found quite a few different genera most all a little past their prime, but there were a good handful of edible and living samples that we brought back and cultured on Thursday of this week. I will give you a better summary of the mushrooms we found in the next article.

If you would like to see some of the samples of fungi that were found in Texas last week, make sure you attend the Colorado Mycological Society meeting this coming Monday at the Denver Botanic Gardens. The meetings start at 7pm and usually wrap up around 9pm. We will be displaying dried samples of Ganoderma, Pleurotus, various Polypores, Earthstars, Lentinus, Lactarius and a few others that were found last week in Austin, Athens, White Oak, and San Antonio. We will also be displaying a few fruiting grain jars of Pleurotus columbinus as well as bags of oyster mushroom spawn made with green techniques.

On another note, our Pink Oyster mushrooms came from Kauai Fungi yesterday for our project that we are doing at a few botanic gardens. Kauai Fungi was kind enough to donate a spawn bag of their tropical variety of Pleurotus djamor to our project. We plan to do a fungi demonstration inside a tropical conservatory. We also just acquired a culture of the Golden Oyster, Pleurotus cornucopiae. I think the two fruiting together would be stunning.

The bags of oyster spawn we made before we left for Texas are starting to form primordia! (primordia are baby mushrooms) This means they are already eaten through their substrate and are starting to want to fruit! We expanded them 12 days ago, so this says to me that our ‘Cold Pasteurization’ concept works just as fast as standard pasteurization methods! Stay tuned for a detailed description of this project, from start to finish, within the month! The bags of spawn are destined for Jackie’s Farm for expansion and fruiting, and if you take one of our seminars this summer, coming to a backyard near you!