July / August 2007 Mushroom Log

Fall Foray-Deep Woods-Hocking Co.

By Walt Sturgeon

9 am Sat., Sept 29 till Noon Sunday, Sept 30.

Where: Deep Woods Farm, owned by the Blythe family who are all naturalists. The site itself is rustic. We will be in the garage and outside if the weather is good. The woods are classic Hocking County with black hand sandstone cliffs, caves, and diverse woodland. It is rugged country but there are trails in some places and easy collecting once you get up on one of the ridges. Seeps and the bottoms of the narrow gorges are also accessible. In very dry conditions Walt and Andrea Moore got 56 species of fungi and 4 myxomycetes.

Dates: Saturday, Sept 29th - Sunday, Sept. 30.

Friday Night (Early Arrivals):
8PM - 10PM Libations and food at the Sandstone Bistro in Logan. Camping is permitted on site Fri. and Sat. nights.

Saturday :

9:00 Coffee/ Donuts

9:30 On-site forays on your own.

10:00 Gorge Foray and Upland Foray

12:00 Lunch (Bring something to share)

12:30: Driving Foray to Wahkeena.

More on-site collecting or collection study. Possible mycophagy.

Beginner’s Program. (tentative)

4:30 Slide Program TBA

6:30 Covered dish onsite or back to the Sandstone Bistro.

Sunday:

10:00. Review of the collections, table walk, followed by collecting on your own.

12:00: Clean up.

Accommodations:

Camping:
Camping is permitted and the hardy may choose to sleep in one of the caves. There may also be indoor space available upstairs in the garage for those with air mattresses.

Local Motels

The Inn Towner on Mulberry St.
www.inntownermotel.com

Located in Logan, about 30 minutes from the foray site,

It is a dated, bare bones motel but clean. Bring your own cell phones as there are no phones in the rooms. Rooms are about $50. Other motels in Logan cost over $120 per night, include:

Holiday Inn Express, 12916 Grey St. Logan, OH 43138. Phone 740/385-7700.

Amerihost Inns

www.amerihostinn.com

12819 Ste. Rte. 664S, Logan, OH

740/385-1700

Directions to Deep Woods Farm:

From Logan:

Take Mulberry St. south (it becomes 93). Follow 93 to 56 and turn right. Start watching for the Deep Woods sign on the left a couple of miles after passing Ash Cave.

From the North:

From Columbus, take US 23 south to Circleville, making a left onto Ste Rte. 56, which goes southeast through Laurelville and South Bloomingville. About 1.5 miles past South Bloomingville is the Deep Woods Farm, at 24851 State Rte. 56. Phone 740/332-6602. There is a gravel driveway, and there will be a sign for the BioBlitz from Sat. mornig through Sun. afternoon. If you come to Ash Cave, you’ve gone 2.5 miles or so southeast past it.

Fall Mini- Foray- Sand Barrens

By Pete & Pauline Munk

Site: North Kingsville Sand Barrens & Kingsville Swamp.

Our fall miniforay will try a new location in Ashtabula County. We will meet Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007 at the CMNH Sand Barrens at 10:00 am. There are no facilities-so stop before you arrive! We plan to break for lunch at a nearby pizza place and head for the ”swamp” in the afternoon. We will finish by 2:30 pm.

Call Pete & Pauline Munk for more information at 440/236-9222.

Directions: Take I-90 east to the Ohio Rte. 193 exit. Follow 193 north to US Rt. 20 east. Travel on US Rte. 20 east to Poore Road. A left (north) on Poore Rd. will take you the Preserve, located just on the other side of the railroad tracks.

Mini-Foray at Christmas Rocks

By Shirley McClelland

Dick Grimm and I will foray into Christmas Rocks, a “permit only” state nature preserve outside of Lancaster. The foray starts at 10 am, Aug. 25 at the covered bridge, and continues through lowlands to a hardwood (mostly oak) old growth forest. Depending on how ambitious we are, it could also include a mature pine plantation, or a climb to the lookout point known as Jacob’s Ladder. We have received a research permit, and will be submitting a list of species to ODNR after ID’ing them at a nearby Lancaster location. Please let Shirley know if you will be attending, shirleymcclelland@msn.com tele. 740/536-7448) so she can email precise directions.

Morel Foray at Woodbury Wildlife Area

By Dick Grimm

23 folks converged on Grandma’s Kuntry Kitchen in Warsaw, OH for brunch before the Morel hunt. Grandma didn’t know we were coming…wow! After the color returned to her face, she served up 21 very nice meals and was 21 meal slips richer as we cleared out. She appeared tired, but was smiling! Just south of the village, the two hour hunt produced a grand total of 19 morels of different sizes, if not species. 6 very large morels were found by Hugh Urban and Dick Grimm. Janet Sweigart and Nancy Murray found several “Tulip” morels. It was an ideal day with plenty of recent rain but…who knows why the lack of shrooms?

My apologies for the delay , your Ed.

Changing of the Guard

By Jerry Pepera

You may have noticed a few organizational changes in the club this year. Walt Sturgeon is now the Chairman and has been active since the board meeting in January. Effective today, I am taking over as Treasurer and Membership Secretary. We wanted to delay this action until mid-year since membership activity slows down at this time. All future inquiries regarding membership should be directed to me. Of course, any complaints should go to Walt since that is what he now gets paid for!

At the last board meeting, Dick Doyle expressed an interest in transitioning out of this role so that he can spend more time enjoying his retirement which includes studying mushrooms, of course. Dick has been faithfully performing the Treasurer and Membership Secretary role for most of its history and as long as I've been in the Club. He has done a truly outstanding job all these years and we are grateful for his dutiful service. Dick will remain a board member in good standing and will continue to help the club in whatever way we can twist his arm! He organized the Denison BioReserve Morel Hunt and will also be hosting the Dick Grimm Banquet, so he's hardly retired as a board member.

Also, a big congratulations and thank you goes to Walt for accepting the Chairman's job. Even though I've had this job since about 1990 or so, Walt has served in this capacity before and brings much experience and expertise to the job.

Ed. Note: I’m following up Jerry’s announcement with this brief history of the Ohio Mushroom Society which Dick Grimm recently sent me. For most of us, me included, this history is probably new information and helps to put Jerry’s announcement of the recent changes in a larger perspective.

OMS: Past And Present

By Dick Grimm

Every so often we publish a short history of the club. When it started, how it started, some names, some numbers and just general information Dick Grimm started the club back in 1972. He had to scratch around to find enough interested mushroomers to launch the program off the pad. He finally got in touch with Harry Knighton of Portsmouth, Ohio who, at the time, was president of NAMA, the National Amateur Mycological Society. Harry put him in touch with a group of men in Xenia, Ohio who at the time had a small local club in action. Among a few others, Doc Morton (deceased), and Rube Holcomb assisted Dick in getting the seed planted and from that point on the society grew from 6 beginning members to the over 200 active members today.

We could include names here but they would only be names. Most of those members from that spore-hypha beginning are now deceased. Rube Holcomb, Dr. Wayne Ellett, and Dick are the only charter members still remaining in the club.

Since most of the members during that beginning era were from Xenia and the surrounding vicinity, the main activity, regarding forays, was held at John Bryan State Park in the Xenia and Yellow Springs area. By word of mouth and through diligent effort from the original spore, the mycelium grew slowly into probably 50 or 60 fruiting bodies. And spread like Armillaria mellea to distant habitats.

Around this time, a tall, thin, gangly professor of Chemistry from Denison University, one Richard Doyle, joined the club. Dick immediately wanted to be treasurer (Dick has a nose for money). There was no pressure to take the job, so after he said "uncle" we released his arm and he took over the duties. He loved the job so much we allowed him to be secretary along with it (another "uncle"). Dick has maintained that double duty through the past 30 years, or practically the total time the club has existed.

The presidential baton was passed from Grimm to a young, dedicated member fresh out of college from Youngstown, Ohio around the same time Doyle took over the duties of Secretary-Treasurer. His name was Walt Sturgeon. Walt was not an avid mushroom enthusiast. .. he was a rabid mushroom enthusiast (in tenacious pursuit, that is). After Grimm taught him the basics and some important preliminaries, Sturgeon was off the block and running like a Psilocybe-filled man possessed (figuratively speaking, of course) and within a ten-year span Walt emerged as one of the finest amateur field men in the country.

Bill Roody, who got his beginnings in the Ohio Mushroom Society, has gone on to become a national authority in wild mushrooming and has authored and co-authored several books on the subject. Harold Keller another author, specializing in the myxomycetes, was also a member in those earlier days. And Dr. Sam Mazzer, a professor of biology and mycology at Kent State University joined the club at that time, as well. Sam was a protege of the noted mycologist, Alexander Smith, from University of Michigan.

Dr. Mazzer brought much knowledge to the club. He was an excellent identifier of mushrooms. Walt's love of the hobby kept him extremely busy and after he became an officer in NAMA the time load became overpowering and he eventually handed the reigns of the presidency to Mary Bobersky, a life member from Lake Milton, Ohio. Mary served as President until her business activities began absorbing most of her time, and Walt again stood in as an interim President. It was at that time the consensus among the group of officers was that the club should be run by a board of directors rather than a President. Walt wanted off the hook, He tried to hand the ball off to Grimm, but Dick wouldn't take it again. So, since nobody wanted the job the decision was made to establish an official board to handle the business of the club's operation. Again the question remained of who would accept the chairmanship

A young man from Mentor, near Cleveland, was backed into a comer at a Penn-Glenn foray near Cleveland. While Doyle held him down and Grimm pried his mouth open, Sturgeon held an Amanita virosa close to his mouth and threatened to go further with it if he didn't accept the job of Chairman as the board. Jerry Pepara didn't, at that time, know too many species of mushrooms, but he did know Amanita virosa and its ramifications. Jerry accepted the job and has been an excellent Chairman since that memorable occasion at Penn-Glenn.

When one begins to hand out plaudits and trophies there are never enough to go around. People get left out; feelings get hurt through no fault other than being overlooked. Thirty years would fill several pages of those members who stepped up front when needed. Workers, on site volunteers, foray leaders, speakers, cooks, bottle washers and the list goes on. The Sweigarts, the Munks, Daphne Vasconselos, Doyle, Sharon Greenberg, Grimm and his wife, Phyllis, Sturgeon, Shirley Hyatt and Terry Miller, Dave Morris, Joe Christian ... all active board members now, or were at one time. How many of the faithful have we missed? We can't forget you, Betty Poorman, or you Joe Strong and Jack Smith Photographers and instigators and implementers of our incorporation. Or you Jack Fronz, always ready to assist and opening a Yahoo news web. As we said, 30 years is a long time. So, if we've overlooked anyone we apologize. To most these are only names anyhow, but clubs do not function without helpers as here mentioned, including those we've inadvertently overlooked. So Step forward, and volunteer . .if nothing more ... ATTEND!

Since the club is a statewide membership (and beyond) club, the newsletter is the tie that binds. Grimm, Sturgeon, Bob Burrell, Roody, Bobersky and Shirley Hyatt and Terry Miller each took a turn. Hyatt and Miller probably bit the bullet for the longevity record and only recently handed the editorship to David Miller a professor at Oberlin College. Dave consented to give it a shot after Pepera confronted him with the offer (gun in hand). We thank Dave for volunteering and the biggest assist we could give him is to send him some copy now and again.

So, there you have it, 30 years digested into a few paragraphs. Every fruiting body has its mycelium

(roots) and this article is a brief insight into ours.

Truffles in Tennessee

(Excerpted from the NY Times article Feb. 28,207 sent in by Hiroko Saeki, published in the Spring, 2007 issue of Spore Print, the Newsletter of the Connecticut Valley Mycological Society)

"The town of Chuckey is located on the upside of the Nolichucky River valley in an eastern jut of Tennessee about 20 miles from the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the North Carolina border ..... On the edge of town, perched on a south-facing slope overlooking the birthplace of Davy Crockett, an orchard of 350 hazelnut trees has begun to sprout Perigord truffles, the fragrant black fungi that can send epicures, as well as routing pigs and dogs, into fits of frenzied greed.

"The truffles from Chuckey are not the first American-grown Perigord truffles. They are, however, the first American grown black truffles to excite some of the country's top chefs, like Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, John Fleer and Jonathan Waxman.

Although unexpected, the Tennessee truffles were not unplanned. Tom Michaels, a 59-year-old plant pathologist, pianist and Scrabble tournament competitor, sprouted the hazelnut trees from seeds. He inoculated their roots with Tuber melanosporum, the Perigord truffle, before setting them in his backyard seven years ago. He resisted dreams of a truffle bonanza as assiduously as he limed his soil and trimmed his trees. Dr. Michaels had, after all, grown up on a mushroom farm west of Chicago and had written his thesis on the difficulty of the in-vitro cultivation and growth of T. melanosporum ... :.

"When, on the morning of Jan. 3, he noticed patches of the tawny Tennessee soil bubbling up like blistered asphalt in his orchard, however, Dr. Michaels lost his circumspection. "I was jumping around yelling 'Eureka!' " he said. And that was before he saw the size of the bulbs, before he felt them and smelled them and tasted them, before one of his truffles had found its way into the chef Daniel Boulud's kitchen in Manhattan, before the chef had confirmed the grower's suspicion.

·'This is it," Mr. Boulud said. "The first time in America. This Tennessee truffle is the real thing." Only then did Dr. Michaels realize that up to 150 pounds of world class truffles could be ripening in the ground behind his modest three-bedroom ranch, and that he had neither dog nor pig to sniff them out before they withered and disappeared

"According to James M. Trappe, a professor emeritus of mycology at Oregon State University and the coauthor of the forthcoming "Trees, Truffles and Beasts: How Forests Function" (Rutgers University Press), there are about 60 species of true truffles, the subterranean fungi that attach to a plant's roots and issue long tendrils that gather nutrition for the plant and use the carbohydrates that the plant returns to eventually form the "fruit" we call truffles - but only a dozen are prized in the kitchen.

"Most fungi sprout a stem and cap that contain reproductive spores. The truffle does not. The truffle is a "sack of spores," explained Dr. Trappe, and while other mushrooms need nothing but a rustling wind to loosen and spread their seed, the subterranean bulb needs to be digested and excreted by an animal. In order to attract rodents and marsupials, the truffle, like a tiny underground perfume factory, produces up to 50 different chemicals that combine to create a scent powerful enough to penetrate up to three feet of earth .. "Some smell like cheese, some like garlic, some like fruit, some like sewer gas," Dr. Trappe said. The aroma of T. melanosporum, generally a mixture of musk and fruit and forest floor, and the earthy, garlicky Tuber magnatum, or Italian white truffle, are the most prized .....

"Dr. Michaels is the first domestic truffle farmer to produce commercial quantities of truffles of a quality that commands top dollar ($50 an ounce, $800 a pound). But he is not the only one panning for black gold. There are, said Charles K. Lefevre, the owner of New World Truffieres in Eugene, Ore., about 300 promising orchards on American soil. 'The same sort of people you find growing grapes in California are starting to plant truffle orchards," said Dr. Lefevre, whose company last year supplied about 13,000 inoculated trees to about 50 hopeful growers.

"In Hillsborough ... Garland Truffles supplies a similar quantity of inoculated trees. With a $235,000 grant from the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund, which supports research that may benefit former tobacco farmers, Mr. Garland has also supplied 45 of those farmers with trees. If even a small number of these orchards succeed, truffles will be more plentiful and their prices may begin to drop."

Articles for the next newsletter

Deadline –September 21

David Miller

352 W. College St.

Oberlin, OH 44074

David.H.Miller@oberlin.edu

Real Mushroomers

By Ron & Bob Roseberry

From Mycelium, Mycological Society of Toronto, July-Sept., 2000, “discovered” by your intrepid editor in the Dec., 2006 issue of Spore Prints, the Bulletin of the Puget Sound Mycological Society.

Are you a real mushroomer? Following is a guide to determine whether you are really qualified for entry into this elite society or just a wannabe.

Real mushroomers:

Can be identified by their funny walk. They walk with their heads down, looking at the ground, until they come to a tree, when their head suddenly comes up and they appear to be looking at the sky. And they frequently look behind themselves just to make sure they haven’t missed one. Other identification features include the burrs on their socks, the constant scratching of chigger bites, and either waterproof boots or wet shoes and socks.

Spend more on mushroom books than on the furniture in the room where the books are kept. When entering a bookstore they always head for the “nature guides” area first. They can identify most mushrooms without a field guide, and have never had a “near death experience” due to misidentification.

Can be found in the woods any month of the year, in any kind of weather, and with complete disregard for the temperature.

Would rather spend half a day lost in the woods than be found by somebody who is not lost but is hunting their favorite mushroom patch.

Can spot a mushroom from their car window at any speed up to 45 miles per hour. The true professionals can sometimes perform the same feat at 60 mph using their rear view mirror.

Will gladly crawl through poison ivy or stinging nettles to harvest a single choice mushroom, and are as adept as circus performers at the three-person-stack (feet on shoulders) to harvest the high growing edibles.

Can frequently be seen wandering across the centerlines or on the shoulder of roads with their automobiles because of their habit of constantly evaluating the wooded areas they are passing for their hunting potential and checking in their rear view mirror for poachers who might be following.

Have half their refrigerator shelves occupied by mushrooms they hope to identify.

Are careful in identifying anything they intend to eat, but will find some good quality in any nonpoisonous mushroom. “It adds texture.’’ ”It adds color.” “It smells like anise.”

Have a real problem enjoying the scenery when visiting parks because they are always looking for mushrooms.

Give honest answers when asked where they find mushrooms. “In the country.” “North of town.” “In a pasture.” “Down by the river.” “Out in the woods.”

Are noted for their distinctive dress. In addition to oddly matched clothing they frequently carry fancy walking sticks and almost always wear very funky hats.

Think almost every mushroom is beautiful.

Can be spotted walking around their yard shaking spores off mature mushrooms or dumping the wash water for choice edibles in the hopes of starting their private mushroom patch. The more ingenious ones use their rotary mower or their garden hose sprayer to distribute the spores evenly.

Always carry a bag in their automobile just in case they suddenly discover a fruiting in an unexpected location, and carry eight or more concealed bags on their person in case they find the “Mother Lode.”

Can a smell “stinkhorns” at 100 yards. Normal people must be within a few feet. (These are considered beautiful and worth collecting, even if they must be strapped to the hood of the car to avoid the odor.)

Will walk miles through the woods on a foray when they are too sick to sit in a chair at work.

Will select the “wild mushrooms” dish on restaurant menus, which usually contain portobella and shiitake mushrooms.

Climate Change Fruitful for Fungi

By Richard Black, reprinted from the May, 2007 issue of The Spore Print, the Journal of the Los Angeles Mycological Society, Inc.

A remarkable father-and-son research project has revealed how rising temperatures are affecting fungi in southern England.

Fungus enthusiast Edward Gange amassed 52,000 sightings of mushrooms and toadstools during walks around Salisbury over a 50-year period.

Analysis by his son Alan, published in the journal Science, shows some fungi have started to fruit twice a year.

It is among the first studies to show a biological impact of warming in autumn.

“My father was a stonemason, and his hobby was mycology,” recounted Alan Gange, an ecology professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

“For 50 years of his life, he went out and recorded the appearance of mushrooms and toadstools around Salisbury, and he also got his friends in the local natural history group to bring back samples they found when they were out walking.

“When he retired, he bought himself a computer, taught himself (the database program) Excel, and typed in all these 52,000 records.”

Now Mr. Gange senior finds his enthusiasm and diligence rewarded as a named author on a paper in one of the two most eminent scientific journals in the world.

“I’m on top of the world, I can’t quite believe it yet,” he told the BBC News website.

The records included sightings of 315 species of mushrooms and toadstools which appear in the autumn, being the seasonal fruiting parts of fungi that live in the soil, on rotting wood or in tree roots.

One of the changes Professor Gange turned up was that the autumnal fruiting period has expanded. Some mushrooms and toadstools are emerging earlier each year, others later, which he thinks are responses to warmer temperatures and higher rainfall.

More spectacularly, he found that more than one third of the species recorded have started to fruit twice per year. There was no record of this before 1976; but since then, 120 species have shown an additional fruiting in spring.

“I looked up the data on the average temperature for February in southern England during the 1950s, and it was 3.5 C,” he said.

“In the current decade it’s 5.2 C. We used to get cold days and nights in February which caused fungi to be dormant; these days we get very little of that.”

In recent years a significant number of studies have found changes in species’ behavior during springtime apparently related to climate change, with growing seasons starting earlier, and young animals born in months which would, in previous years, have been too cold.

This is one of the first studies to show a parallel trend in autumn.

After more than 50 years of observing the natural world, Edward Gange is convinced that the climate is changing-at least within a 30 km radius of Salisbury-though he prefers to attribute the warming to natural cycles rather than humanity’s production of greenhouse gases.

“When I was a lad, it was an absolutely categorical fact that Red Admirals would not survive the winter,” he said.

“This year we saw them on 19 January. That’s a heck of a change, and it’s not the only one.”

5 April, 2007. Story from BBC News.

The Mushroom Log