BULLETIN OF THE PUGET SOUND MYCOLOGICALSOCIETY
Number 348, January 1999
Electronic Edition is published monthly, September through Juneby the
Puget Sound Mycological Society
Center for Urban Horticulture, Box 354115
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195
(206) 522-6031
Agnes A. Sieger, Editor
Dick Sieger, HTML Editor
MEMBERSHIP MEETING
Tuesday, January 12, at 7:30 PM at the Center for UrbanHorticulture, 3501 NE 41st Street, Seattle
We start off 1999 with Steve Trudell’s fascinating lecture,“Mycorrhizae: What Are They and Why Should You Care?”
Mycorrhizae are ancient and vital symbioses, which do much morethan provide chanterelles and matsutake for your table. Withoutthem, there would be virtually no plant and animal life on thisplanet. Come find out what mycorrhizaeare, what they do, why there’s more to them than meets theeye, and why they are finally beginning to be noticed by increasingnumbers of ecologists and environmental scientists.
Steve is a Ph.D. candidate in the Ecosystems Science Division ofthe UW College of Forest Resources. He has studied and photographedmushrooms for two decades and is currently conducting research onthe role of mycorrhizal fungi in providing plants with nitrogen.Before returning to the UW, Steve served as a visiting facultymember at Evergreen State College, where he taught mycology,botany, geology, and soil ecology.
NEW MEMBER alert: This lecture contains information vital toyour understanding of wild mushrooms!
Would persons with last names beginning with the lettersH–O please bring refreshments for the social hour?
CALENDAR
Jan. 12 Membership Meeting, 7:30 PM, CUH
Jan. 18 Board meeting
Jan. 23 Spore Prints deadline
Feb. 16 Booth setup, Northwest Flower and Garden Show,Convention Center, 9:00 AM–noon
Feb. 17–21 Northwest Flower and Garden Show booth,Convention Center
Mar. 13 Survivor’s Banquet, Edmonds CommunityCollege
BOARD NEWS Dick Sieger
Education Chair Lisa Bellefond is planning a spring microscopyworkshop and a fall Cortinarius workshop led by Dr. Ammiratiand is working with Brian Luther to develop a program for trainingnew PSMS identifiers. An investment committee including Dan Tanabe,Henry Lingat, and Ron Pyeatt is being formed. We gained 92 newmembers at the exhibit. Three volunteers are needed to co-chair theField Trip Committee. One will be a site planner, one an equipmentcoordinator, and one a host coordinator. Field trips this year willbe for one day, alternating between Saturdays and Sundays. PSMSwill have a spring foray and a fall foray, perhaps at TheMountaineers Meany Lodge and Lake Quinault. The outing led by BrianLuther was an outstanding success. The Election Committee ispreparing its slate. The Survivor’s Banquet will be preparedby the Culinary Arts Program at Edmonds Community College on March13. The cost will be about $30.00, and Bernice Velategui will be incharge of reservations. Lynne Elwell is in charge of the PSMS boothat the Northwest Flower and Garden Show and will enlist helpers atthe January meeting. Solving the millennium bug wasn'tdiscussed.
FROM THE PRESIDENT Doug Ward
The topic of field trips was discussed at the December Boardmeeting with the hopes of introducing ways to make the field tripsmore accessible to the whole of PSMS. The following thoughts wereput forward:
a. Concentrate on day trips instead of overnights.
b. Include one major Spring and Fall foray (overnight) at placeslike Lake Wenatchee, Lake Quinault, etc.
c. Alternate the day trips on Saturday and Sunday (to accommodatethose whose Saturday activities prevent attendance now).d Arrangeto have some day trips in the local area (Seward Park, etc.) so thetravel burden is lessened for those without a way to make longtrips.
e. Change the Field Trip Coordinator so as to split up the tasksamong more than one person, a Site Coordinator who will arrange thetimes and places, and a Host Coordinator who will arrange forseveral hosts at each trip.
Your Board would like some feedback from the membership on theseideas. Nothing is decided for sure as yet. Please let us know bysending a postcard, leaving a phone message on the PSMS phone, orsending me an e-mail message.
FLOWER AND GARDEN SHOW 1999 Lynne Elwell
PSMS will again have an information booth at the Northwest Flower andGarden Show held at the Seattle Convention Center from February17–21, 1999.
A few people are needed to help set up the booths on Tuesday,February 16, from 9:00 AM–noon. Many more are needed to staffit during the show. Sign-up sheets will be available at the Januarymeeting or call Lynne Elwell at (425) 885-5580. It’s a lot offun, and all who participate get to see the show for free.
LOOKING AHEAD
The Maine Mycological Association will be hosting the nextNortheast Mycological Foray on Labor Day weekend 1999. Details areas follows:
NEMF 1999: Fifth Annual Samuel Ristich Foray
Hosts: Maine Mycological Association
Place: Sugarloaf USA, Carrabasset Valley, ME
Time: Friday, Sept. 3 to Monday, Sept. 6, 1999
Chief Mycologist: Dr. Alan Bessette
Contact: CClarke1@maine.rr.com
Sugarloaf,best known as a ski resort, is in the western mountains of Maine,90 miles from Augusta, 110 miles from Bangor, 125 miles fromPortland, 225 miles from Boston, and 435 scenic miles from New YorkCity.
1999 SURVIVOR’S BANQUET Steven Bell
Mark your calendars for the last Survivor’s Banquet of themillennium, Saturday, March 13, at Edmonds Community College. Thecost will be around $30 each.
If you would like to be a part of the planning for this event,contact Steven Bell via e-mail at webmaster@psms.org.
THANKS TO OUR SUPPLIERS Joanne Young
Thank you to our suppliers for their help on the 1998 ExhibitPoster. To Rolf Vecchi, owner of Qualigraphics, for an excellentprinting job and for donating all the beautiful art reproductionpaper for the poster. To the crew of Trademark Color Separationsfor their fine work preparing the film for the poster, andespecially to owner Darrel Schmidt for the use of his computersystem, and for the many hours of his patient assistance.
THE REAL STORY OF SANTA The Spore Print, LosAngeles Mycological Society, December 1998
Reindeer go crazy—literally crazy—for Amanitamuscaria, the Fly Agaric, which the Lapp people traditionallyused for its hallucinogenic effects.
Lapp shamans used to eat the mushroom during the midwinter paganceremonies of annual renewal. The first effect of eating it was adeep coma-like slumber. When the shamans woke the drug stimulatedtheir muscular systems, so that a small effort produced spectacularresults—the intoxicated person perhaps making a gigantic leapto clear the smallest obstacle.
The effect on animals was generally the same, and amushroom-maddened super-reindeer traditionally guarded eachshaman.
When Christian missionaries first reached Santa’s nativeLapland, they found a thriving pagan myth of reindeer flight.Rather than oppose it, they shrewdly assimilated the stories intothe folklore of Christmas and SaintNicholas. This then, is the true origin of the legend ofSanta’s flying sleigh.
The color scheme of his outfit is taken from the unmistakablered and white cap of the fungus. Lapps still scatter the mushroomin the snow to round up reindeer.
MUSHROOM PICKERS FACE DRUG CHARGES The SpokaneSpokesman-Review November 1, 1998 via The Spore Print,L.A. Myco. Soc., Dec. 1998
Longview, Wash. Six people were arrested on drug charges afterauthorities found a group of about 20 people harvestinghallucinogenic mushrooms from a pasture.
Police from Longview and Kelso joined Cowlitz County sheriffsofficers Thursday morning at the field on private land near thecity’s new industrial park. “We started walking into thefield and they didn’t see us,” said Longview PoliceOfficer Jason Winker. We were 10 feet away from two people beforethey noticed we were there, they were so intent on pickingmushrooms.”
The same thing happened when officers approached a second andthird group in the cow pasture, Winker said. “They eitherdidn’t realize we were there or they didn’tcare.”
Five men and one woman were booked into Cowlitz County Jail inlieu of $5,000 bail. The others, who did not have mushrooms intheir possession, were issued trespassing warnings.
“This pasture is well-known for its production of magicmushrooms,” Winker said. “Now we’re going to be allover it.”
ANCIENT FUNGAL MEDICINE Dick Sieger
Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them,but not for love.
William Shakespeare
The IceMan was an early Copper Age man who died on a trek through theAlps 5,300 years ago. His well preserved body and equipment werefound in 1991, frozen in an Italian glacier. Among the things hecarried was a thong on which he threaded two pieces of Piptoporusbetulinus, the birch polypore. Smoldering pieces of thisfungus have been used to transport and start fires, and it wasthought that the Iceman carried it for that purpose. New evidenceshows that the fungus was likely used as a medicine.
An autopsy revealed that the Iceman’s colon was infestedwith Trichuris trichiura, parasitic whipworms that cause acutestomach pain, diarrhea, and anemia. P. betulinus is an effectiveremedy. It contains antibiotic oils that act on some mycobacteria,resins that attack whipworms, and agaric acid which is a powerfullaxative. Ingesting P. betulinus would have brought the Icemanrelief by killing most of the worms and then purging his system ofthe worms and their eggs.
ELECTION COMMITTEE REPORT Dick Sieger
The election committee will present its slate and takenominations from the floor at the January meeting. This year, wewill elect a Vice President, a Secretary, five board members, andthree alternates. Any PSMS member may be nominated for any officebut we hope that the people nominated have consented to run. Oursociety has traditionally encouraged newer members to become boardmembers.
PROMISCUOUS MYCORRHIZAE PROVIDE SCIENTIFIC TITILLATIONBill Freedman, The Arizona Fun-Gi, via Duff,Newsletter of The Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz, March 1998
Investigators have begun to explore the many plant relationshipsto be uncovered under the surface of the soil. Most of us arefamiliar with “mycorrhizae” (MRZ), the mycelial threadswhich surround tree roots or invade plant cells to obtain essentialsugars and to nourish the plants by supplying them with nutrientssuch as sugars, phosphorus, potassium, iron, etc. We have beenimpressed that soil fungi are frequently restricted to specifictrees. Now we find that a single fungus can extend betweendifferent trees and help them by sharing what seems to be thefungus’s food.
Finding mushrooms as they pop up out of the ground is easy. Theyare lovely to look at, some are tasty to eat, and they serve manybeneficial life functions. If we study them, they can add to ourknowledge and understanding of other living things. But themushrooms we see are but fruiting bodies, like apples on a treewhich is buried below the surface of the soil. It is more difficultto examine and understand the complexity of what is happeningunderground because we must apply chemical techniques andcomplicated instruments such as electron microscopes. The objectsof our contemplation are seldom grossly visible and it may takesome imagination to visualize what is happening.
Scientists have begun to apply systematic experiments and tostudy the chemical relationships between fungi and plants.What’s new is that similar studies are being made betweenplants and plants. And it has been shown that fungi can act asintermediates in this exchange. So far, this pathway for sharingnutrients has been called “matting.”
I’ve read two such articles. Carl Zimmer, winner of the1997 American Institute of Biological Science Media award andsenior editor for Discover magazine, discusses theintricacies of underground webs of life in the November issue ofthe magazine.
MRZ were rediscovered in 1881 when German botanists were sent toFrance to discover the secrets of growing Perigord truffles. TheGerman public didn’t want to pay the stiff import tariffs onhighly favored black truffles. They wanted a share of the market.Professor A. B. Frank was assigned to bring suitable trees intoGermany to develop a truffle industry.
Frustrated, he was unable to solve the mystery of why the mostpreferred ones chose to grow only in France. He became distractedby the challenge of explaining why tree roots were so altered inappearance and were so intimately associated with mycelia andtruffles. He defined the MRZ state.
As you know, forest trees easily take carbon dioxide from theair and convert it by photosynthesis into sugars. Absorbing saltssuch as phosphorus, nitrogen and other chemicals essential for lifefrom the soil is more difficult. Experiments done with radioactiveisotopes of elements easily demonstrated the interdependentexchange of chemicals needed for the nutrition of both fungus andtree. Fungi can change the chemical nature of essential soilelements such as iron, making them available to the plant afterspecial reactions take place in or around the fungus mycelia.Actually, it was a botanist named Kamienski who was first todiscover, circa 1881, the presence of MRZ. All forest-litter
Suzanne Simard, ecologist at the British Columbia Ministry ofForests in Kamloops, was able to follow the distribution ofradioactive carbon isotopes between different kinds of trees. Shegrew birch and Douglas fir trees, covered them with plastic, andintroduced gaseous isotope-labeled carbon dioxide, first to onetree and then the other. She observed that the labeled carbon wastransferred to the other tree. Another experiment revealed thatwhen one tree was shaded from sunshine, it accumulated more carbonisotope than another in full sunlight did. This indicates that thetree least able to manufacture sugar (because of reduced sunlight)was extracting more carbons (sugars) than the sunny tree. Since allthe sugars are manufactured by the trees and the mushrooms areunable to make them, you can see that a fungal intermediate(species not identified) is used for the passage of the sugars. Andthe fungi sacrifice the sugars they withdraw from one tree for thebenefit of the other tree.
Paper birch trees grow swiftly and shade nearby Douglas firs,which in their youth do not tolerate direct sunlight well. In thisway, with the help of the MRZ, the birch trees are nourishing andprotecting the firs. Other plants may also be transferringchemicals between themselves without the help of fungi—that iswhat “matting” is all about. Foresters remove “weedtrees” such as the soft birches from stands of firs. In doingso, they have been interfering with the balance between these twospecies as they remove the shade needed by the fir trees foroptimal growth.
Another brief note on recent studies of fungal soilrelationships: Gary Lincoff from the New York Mycological Societyspoke to me briefly about mushrooms that will not fruit in theabsence of certain bacteria. When I obtain the data to review this,it will be reported in the Mycena News.
In the meantime, I remain a man, part of whose roots lie underthe soil, contemplating how little we know of the intense warlikeand cooperative activities taking place under our feet.
MUSHROOM MISSIONARIES
If you have done any mushroom missionary work, please notifythe editor, so we can give you credit in Spore Prints .
DenisBenjamin gave a class at The Herbfarm on November 14.
Steven Bellidentified 30 species of fungi for 40–50 people from the Foodand Wine Association on a field trip led by Jon Rowleynear Federation Forest on October 25.
Patrice Benson kept busy with various activities: Classes atTheHerbfarm on September 13 and October 3; an all-daybeginners’ mushroom class for the Olympic PeninsulaMycological Society at Chimacum with Dick Sieger on September 19; amushroom class for LesDames d’Escoffier at CUH on September 28; PSMS Beginnerclasses on October 7 and November 4; Tall Timbers Forest Servicemushroom survey October 16–18; a mushroom hunt and outdoorcooking demonstration with Jerry Traunfeld (auction donation)October 29; a mushroom cooking fund-raiser for Les Damesd’Escoffier November 14 with Lynn Phillips; a culinary artslecture at North Seattle Community College November 18; and aculinary arts lecture at Seattle Central Community College November19.
OREGONMATSUTAKE OFFER SLIM PICKINGS Los Angeles MycologicalSociety, December 1998
Each fall, the matsutake season brings thousands of pickers tothe forests of western North America. But in Oregon, at least, the1998 season was not a happy one.
“It’s the worst year I’ve ever had,” saidDang Sandara, a picker and buyer from Sacramento, California.“There’s just no mushrooms.”
“The only place that I heard was fairly decent this yearwas in Canada,” said Dan Nichols of Cave Junction, Oregon, whopicks and buys matsutake. “If it’s not the worst year,it’s definitely within the top three worst years.”
“It was too dry for too long there,” said Mark Grantof Medford.
Buyers reported the nightly haul from the Illinois Valley insouthwestern Oregon was typically just 50 lb. That compares to 600to 700 lb a night in 1993, which was considered a poor year, and asmuch as 2,000 lb a night in good years.
“The average picker is probably making $10 a day,”said Grant, “and that’s before paying for gas.”
The mushrooms are typically shipped to Japan, where they cancommand high prices. But this year, with so few matsutakeavailable, they were being sent to local markets in San Franciscoand other West Coast cities, Nichols said.
MUSHROOM STUFFING PSMS Cookbook
2 cups bread cubes
4 Tbs butter
2 cups mushrooms, chopped
1/3 cup dry onion, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
Dash pepper
2 tsp poultry seasoning
Accent
Trim crusts from bread. Cube. Lay on shallow pan and set in a400‘F oven until lightly browned.
Melt butter in a large fry pan and saute mushrooms until liquidevaporates. Add onion and cook until transparent. Add bread cubesand toss lightly. Add salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, and Accent.Makes 3 cups stuffing.
The largest whitetruffle found in 1998 is on display at the Mark Hotel, 77thStreet and Madison Avenue., New York City. It weighs 1 lb,9½ oz and is worth $6,000.