Welcome to PSMS!

We are an organization that encourages the research, education, cultivation, hunting, identification and the cooking of mushrooms. With over 2,400 members, PSMS
is one of the largest mycological societies in the country.

We share our knowledge about mushrooms through meetings, classes, workshops and field trips.

Please join us at a meeting or become a member today!

Join PSMS Online

Latest PSMS News

The Puget Sound Mycological Society is an ALL volunteer non-profit organization. PSMS does not have ANY employees.

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!

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024 - 7:30pm

Monthly Meeting

Britt Bunyard: A Resilient Planet Needs Fungi NOW

Click here to join this meeting virtually.

This meeting will be a "hybrid" meeting both in-person at the Center for Urban Horticulture and virtual on Zoom. We will start letting people into the CUH meeting hall at about 7:00 pm and into the Zoom meeting at about 7:15. The lecture will begin at approximately 7:30 pm.

Fungi are weird, fungi are cool, and fungi are beautiful. But how much do we really know about them? For starters, they do much more than just rot things. They control pretty much all life on our planet and are everywhere. Britt Bunyard's lecture will present fascinating stories and beautiful photos of amazing fungi featured in his latest book. Discover the crazy, wonderful life that goes on all around us, mostly hidden in plain sight. For general audiences, no knowledge of mycology is required, and all levels of mycological questions are encouraged for the Q&A. This lecture is based on features from Bunyard's new book, The Lives of Fungi, A Natural History of Our Planet's Decomposers.

Britt Bunyard, PhD, is the founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the mycology journal Fungi, in print since 2008. Britt is a former university professor and has published over 100 academic and popular science papers. He has served as an editor for mycological and entomological research journals, and mushroom guide books.

A popular evangelizer on all things fungal, Britt has given more than 250 invited lectures to academic and popular audiences across North America and beyond. He has been featured on the BBC World Service's Newshour, NPR's All Things Considered, PBS's NOVA and Wisconsin Foodie television programs; and interviewed or quoted in Discover magazine, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Vox, Vogue, Forbes, Saveur, Eating Well, Hobby Farm, Women's World, and other magazines and newspapers.

Britt has collected fungi and lectured throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Annually, he leads mycological expeditions throughout the world. One such expedition, was the subject of a documentary film "Look Down Not Up" (2022), produced by documentary filmmakers Alok Siddhi Tuladhar and Dusty Shiva Panthi of Kathmandu, Nepal.

Britt has authored several books, including The Little Book of Fungi (2024; Princeton University Press), Lives of the Fungi (2022; Princeton University Press), The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms (2021; Quarry Books), Amanitas of North America (2020; The Fungi Press), and Mushrooms and Macrofungi of Ohio and Midwestern States (2012; The Ohio State University Press).

Britt has served as Executive Director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival since 2014. In 2021 he was awarded the Gary Lincoff Award "For Contributions to Amateur Mycology," by the North American Mycological Association-NAMA's most prestigious honor for American mycologists.