BULLETIN OF THE PUGET SOUND MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY Number 457 December 2009 eason’s reetings ay all your mushroom dreams come true! page 1 EMBERSHIP MEETING Spore Prints Tuesday, December 9, 7:30 p.m, in the Center for Urban Horti- is published monthly, September through June by the culture, 3501 NE 41st Street, Seattle PUGET SOUND MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY Center for Urban Horticulture, Box 354115 December’s membership meeting features our famous annual University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195 Cookie Bash. This event, hosted by your Board of Directors, will (206) 522-6031 http://www.psms.org showcase the culinary and creative talents of our members. Please User name: Password: arrive festively attired and bearing a contribution to our fabulous OFFICERS: Patrice Benson, President and fancy fungi feast. This is traditionally Milton Tam, Vice President a finger food event with hot and cold hors John Goldman, Treasurer d’oeuvres, but also with salads, casseroles, Denise Banaszewski, Secretary and desserts of your choosing. There will TRUSTEES: Brenda Fong, Debra Lehrberger, be three other events in addition to eating in Cathy Lennebacker, Don Lennebacker, which you are encouraged to participate. Dennis Notman, Jamie Notman, Slide Show: Please contribute a few of your favorite digital Randy Richardson, Jennifer Slack, Kim Traverse, Jean Zatochill pictures from your 2009 trips and explorations to present at our Ron Post (Immed. Past Pres.) share-and-tell show. When they are projected, you will be given the microphone to tell us about your pictures. The subjects you ALTERNATE: Louise Asif, Jim Hughes present are your choice, but we will, of course, want to hear about SCI. ADVISOR: Dr. Joseph F. Ammirati mushroom-related adventures! You may e-mail a Power Point EDITOR: Agnes A. Sieger, 271 Harmony Lane, presentation or your digital files ahead of time to Milton Tam Port Angeles, WA 98362 ([email protected]), or just bring them on a CD or memory [email protected] stick to the gathering. Annual dues $25; full-time students $15 Bucket Raffle: This year we will be selling raffle tickets and raf- fling off a number of mushroom-related items with all proceeds going to the Ben Woo Scholarship Fund. The idea will be to put one or more raffle tickets in the bucket next to the item you want, and if your number is drawn you will win that ALENDER item. This is also the chance for you to donate Dec. 8 Membership meeting, cookie bash, slide show, and some of your mushroom-related objects for ei- edible art contest, 7:30 p.m., CUH ther our bucket raffle or as prizes for the edible art contest. Please bring your items wrapped Dec. 14 Board Meeting, 7:30 p.m., CUH and ready to go. Dec. 15 Spore Prints deadline Edible Mushroom Art Contest: Express yourself through your art! Your creation will be a piece of edible mushroom art, which can be consumed after voting. The obligatory theme for your art is the world of fungi. Prizes will be awarded by popular vote. Arrive early if you need to set up your work of art. OARD NEWS Denise Banaszewski The 2009 Annual Exhibit was one of our best attended and most successful shows, with approximately 1,800 people attending over WANOH STATE PARK FIELD TRIP the weekend. Thank you to all the volunteers and presenters for Brian Luther making it a great show! In other news, we will be making a change to our website in the I was expecting a pretty big crowd for the Twanoh field trip on coming months, which is allowing only members to access our October 24, being the first one after our Annual Exhibit, but I current Spore Prints issues. The Board agreed that it didn’t make was still truly surprised to see a full 107 people sign in—Holy a lot of sense to give the general public access to our field trip Moly! It had been raining for several days prior, and the predic- information, which is a key benefit of membership. Make sure to tions were for more rain starting late Sunday. But somehow we remember the user name and password, which is only found at got in a good word with the rain gods for our day at Hood Canal, the top of this page (it’s not in the electronic version). Speaking of and it was perfect. Friday evening Larry Baxter and I took a hike membership, please remember that your membership will expire on the two mile trail in the park just to see what was coming up. on December 31, so remember to renew! Membership will con- We saw quite a few good edibles which, of course, we left for the tinue through December 31, 2010, for new members who joined group the next day. at the Annual Exhibit, or to any others who joined this fall and As usual Larry and I got down to the shelter in the dark around were told that their membership would continue through 2010. 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning from my house nearby and had to use Please be sure to come to the December meeting—we will be flashlights to clean the shelter and start arranging things before it having a silent auction, an art contest (mushroom-themed art got light. Then a little before 7:00 a.m. Heidi, a park volunteer, preferred but not required), a slide show, door prizes, and, of came by with a small four wheeler and turned the power on and course, great food! gave us extra garbage liners. We got a big fire started, which we page 2 kept going all day. At one point in the early morning I looked over together. I’m already planning some morel hunting field trips on and counted 20 people circled around the fire. It felt really good. the east slopes of the Cascades for next spring, so stay tuned. Our host was Kitty Loceff. She and her husband have a cabin on Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year and as Hood Canal, but way up at the extreme north end near Point No always—good collecting. Point, a good hour and a half drive away. Kitty got there around 8:30 a.m. and soon had everything super organized. However, she did not anticipate the size of the gathering, and at one point had to make a trip into Belfair to pick up some more muffins, bagels, and ACK OF MUSHROOM EXPERTS IN UK IS goodies. Her efforts were definitely appreciated considering how CAUSING LIFE-THREATENING DELAYS IN rapidly all the edibles were consumed. I brought a coffee machine TREATMENT, WARNS WATLING to refill the big PSMS coffee canisters when they emptied—and www.dailymail.co.uk, Nov. 15, 2009 let me tell ya, we ended up making several more batches of coffee throughout the day. Thanks, Kitty. You did a great job! The professor who identified a toxic mushroom that left the author of the acclaimed novel The Horse Whisperer seriously ill has At 10:00 a.m. I gave a brief introductory lecture about collecting warned of a critical shortage of similar experts. in Washington State Parks, discussed proper collecting equipment and techniques, provided a handout, and distributed data slips to Nicholas Evans, 59, and his brother-in-law, Sir Alistair Gordon- those who were planning to collect in the park. Off they went in Cumming, 55, fell ill after eating Deadly Webcaps [Cortinarius all directions. rubellus, formerly known as C. speciosissimus], which they had mistaken for harmless chanterelles. Both need 15 hours of dialysis By the time of the potluck, all the picnic tables, including the a week to stay alive. benches, were covered with mushrooms. It’s a good thing I had two knowledgeable ID people helping me. Both Larry Baxter Now Professor Roy Watling says a lack of experts able to identify and Marian Maxwell worked nonstop all day assisting people poisonous fungi is causing life-threatening delays in treatment. and writing specimen tags. One hundred and seventy one species The professor, 71—whose skills are still relied on by hospitals were tabulated, and those were just the specimens collected from even though he retired ten years ago—said: “There should be Twanoh State Park. There were many others that were collected people replacing me because I won’t exist forever. To rely on me elsewhere, but did not have specimen data slips with them. Thus, at my age is ridiculous.” there were probably 200 or more species displayed on the tables. The two men picked the webcaps from Sir Alistair’s estate near Many people found chanterelles within the park, both Cantharellus Forres, Scotland, in September last year. Soon after eating them formosus and C. subalbidus, and one person found a Matsutake they experienced severe stomach pains and were rushed to hos- under Douglas Fir right near the parking lot. A ton of Lobster pital. Mushrooms came in, but most were too far gone, and I spent a lot of time showing people where the decay was and what portions Although Professor Watling correctly identified the species and could still be salvaged. advised on treatment, there was a two-day delay in contacting him. Interesting or unusual finds included the snow white Albolepto- nia sericella, the remarkable Lepiota acutesquamosa, and two He said: “If somebody had been able to identify them within a few collections of the obscure little purple, jelly-like Ascocoryne hours of them eating it, or getting to hospital, maybe we would cylichnium. A couple of collections of the lovely bright-orange have been able to save their kidneys.” Pholiota astragalina also showed up, but clearly the winner of Deadly webcaps, which have a reddish brown cap, are among the both the super fragrance and beauty contest in my estimation most toxic of the 10,000 species of mushrooms in the UK.