Latest PSMS News
Save The Dates
The Ben Woo Foray will be Oct. 17-19th, 2025
Our Annual Wild Mushroom Show will be Oct. 25-26th, 2025
Call For Art !!!
The Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS) put out a Call for Art a few weeks ago. Here's the information that you've been waiting for. Thanks for your patience as we worked out the details. Click on this link to direct you to the Rules and Guidelines for submission.
Fall 2024 "Hildegard Hendrickson ID Clinics" at CUH are done for the season!
Thank you to everyone who participated and helped out. See you in the spring!PSMS Inclusivity Statement
For over fifty years, the Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS) has nurtured collaboration amongst its members for an understanding and appreciation of the wide diversity of mushroom species in the Pacific Northwest. We also depend on a diverse membership to support our mission to foster the understanding and appreciation of mycology as a hobby and a science. In recent months, as systematic inequality in U.S. society is revealed to a broader audience, it becomes clearer that inequality imposes barriers on marginalized groups to participation in a wide variety of activities. PSMS opposes all barriers that limit participation in mycology. PSMS and its board members support a more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming organization where all people, especially those who are underrepresented in our organization and society at large, can enjoy mushrooms and all of the activities associated with them. We realize this will be an on-going conversation and are looking to our members for suggestions on ways to increase diversity, inclusivity, and welcoming. Thank you as we join together to make this long-overdue journey toward systemic equality!
Featured Content
If You Suspect
a Poisoning
Contact a physician or Washington Poison Center: 1-800-222-1222
More Poison InformationSpore Prints Newsletter
Spore Prints is the monthly newsletter of PSMS containing announcements of coming events and speakers, plus a variety of tidbits, trivia, recipes, and research developments.
Spore Prints Archive
Harvesting Rules
Washington state is divided into numerous federal, state, local and Native American jurisdictions. Learn the proper rules for each jurisdiction.
Harvesting Information
Upcoming Events
Tuesday, Apr. 8, 2025 - 7:30pm
Monthly Meeting
Michael Beug - Medicinal/Culinary Mushrooms: Fantastic Fungi to Save Body, Mind, Spirit, and the Planet
Click here to join this meeting virtually.
Few people have the knowledge and experience of our next speaker - Michael Beug. He has been involved with the Pacific North West mushroom scene since the 60's . Classically trained as Chemist, he has a unique insight to the metabolic functions that fungi are capable of. Fungi are powerful chemical factories, producing many compounds that have been used as medicine for centuries. We are looking forward to hearing what he has to say in his lecture described below.
The talk will be in two parts: Part 1 on psychotropic fungi and Part 2 on general medicinal/culinary fungi. Part 1 deals briefly with mushrooms in the Amanita muscaria, A. gemmata, and A. pantherinoides groups where the principal toxins are muscimol and ibotenic acid and then explores in depth the species containing psilocybin and psilocin as the main active compounds. Part 2 examines mushroom food value and nutrition and the vast range of potential functional foods and medicinal uses of fungi. I also briefly examine evolving uses of fungi to grow homes, make recyclable materials to replace plastics as well as synthetic dyes and thus ease adverse human effects on the environment.
Please join us in this journey into the mind / body / and environmental considerations of FUNGI...
p.s. As he is the author of the best selling Field Guide - "Mushrooms of Cascadia - An Illustrated Key" Dr. Beug will have copies for sale & signing after the lecture.
This meeting will be a "hybrid" meeting both in-person at the Center for Urban Horticulture and virtual on Zoom. Doors open at 7:00 pm. The lecture will start around 7:30 pm.