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Friends of Fungi - May 2022

Good evening friends,

I hope your Memorial Day, and Memorial Day weekend, has been treating you well. This Monday is going to be a picture round-up from Catskill Fungi's Friends of Fungi retreat at the Menla Resort in Phoenicia, NY. I was fortunate enough to help John (founder of Catskill Fungi), Gabriela (director of the Fungal Diversity Survey), and Erwin (site manager at CycleX Farm) host this retreat. It was a beautiful weekend of learning and expanding our mycelial minds. I'm also going to do a walk in Central Park this Saturday, June 4th - more details way down below.


Without further ado, let's look at some mushrooms.

Hemlock Varnish Shelf/Reishi - Ganoderma tsugae:

Ganoderma tsugae

Brown cup fungus - Peziza or Phylloscypha species:

Brown cup fungus

Xylaria species, perhaps Dead Man's Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha):

Xylaria species

Kuehneromyces species, perhaps K. marginellus:

Kuehneromyces species

Crown-tipped coral (Artomyces pyxidatus):

Crown-tipped coral

And here are some of the fun(gal) activities we got into:


Making oyster mushroom grow kits using cat litter and coffee grounds:

Making oyster mushroom grow kits

Inoculating logs with shiitake and maitake mycelium:

Inoculating logs

Learning about fermentation (yeasts are, in fact, fungi) as well as how to make kombucha:

Learning about fermentation

Inoculating woodchip piles with the edible Wine Caps (Stropharia Rugosoannulata)


There were plenty of other mushrooms and activities, but I won't divulge all the secrets of this magical weekend, so I guess you'll just have to join us in the fall to find out ;)


As a bonus, here's a picture of chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureous) that I've wanted to share. I found it growing in Manitou on 5/17/2022, the earliest I've seen chicken of the woods.


Chicken of the woods

The past two weekends have been a blast. This week's post was photo heavy - we certainly aren't going to be splitting the atom in the MushroomMonday lab on Memorial Day Monday - but next week's edition will be back to the regular format. The rains have been generous and we're seeing all sorts of summer mushrooms popping up now. Send me pictures if you've had some neat finds yourself and we'll reconvene this time next week to see what we find in Central Park this Saturday.


Central Park Walk

11AM in Central Park on 6/4. Same meeting spot as the last few, but the location is below just in case. Respond to this email if you plan on joining so I can get a loose headcount. Hope to see you there :)


Map of location

Hope everyone had a spectacular holiday weekend and remember to hydrate tomorrow - it's gonna be a hot one,

Aubrey


PS. Ed, if you're reading this, I have all the stuff you left. Email me and we'll figure out how to get all that mycelium up to ya.

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