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Recent Posts
Notes from the Mountain
july mushroom notes Greetings, take two. After Kevin got me set up to transmit on Patreon, and just before I was about to send this, the electricity went out for 5 days and so now Im rewriting this as best I can. The gray morels have hung on quite a while, some freshies even made it to the potluck at Cat’s the 23rd. Little else but conks, the intense heat has shriveled the berry season to a fraction of last year’s bounty. Big bolete year brewing in Colorado and Wyoming, the wind and recent weather may even scare up a…
Fungi In the Forest Plan
Hello planning team, Thanks for your work to make a new forest plan. After careful reading, we observe the draft forest plan fails to include any mention of fungi, and only mentions mushrooms tangentially to OFP (Other Forest Products, widely known as Non Timber Forest Products). To merely whine about absence is pointless. Therefore I’m outlining below a few specific examples of places in the draft forest plan that rely upon or impact fungi and fungal processes where these organisms are not mentioned, using acronyms as employed in the document. The USDA publications we offered the team during the assessment phase and in comments…
Species of Special Consideration
Our Northern Rocky Mountain Region contains thousands of unique Fungal species, many of which we haven’t officially discovered! However, some of our favorite well known Fungi are undeniably keystone species, and maintaining healthy populations is just as important as maintaining the health of our more known threatened Flora and Fauna species. Macroflora and Fauna, such as the Grizzly Bear or the White Bark Pine are known throughout Montana as threatened species. Unfortunately, none of our Fungi are even considered. Here’s 20 fungal species of special concern, and why they’re important. All of these are endemic to Region 1. These species…
Why Fungi?
A Letter from Larry Evan’s Part of our mission statement at the Western Montana Mycological Association is “to protect and preserve mushroom habitat,” and in this regard we have a long history of providing commentary for various proposed actions. A key issue for our community is the lack of language regarding fungi in policy documents and how to correct this glaring oversight. We will post updates and alerts about actions you can take to help. Dear Forest Planning Team, I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to bring attention to an important aspect of forest management that…
Morels of North America
WMMA Member Britain Morin knows his mushrooms! He is a staple in mushroom identification groups online, and has helped countless people figure out what mushroom they’ve found through various online mushroom communities. He generously wrote this amazing guide to the Morels of North America, and kindly allowed us to share his work here. The seasonal morel season has begun. Everyone gets excited when the year round Morchella rufobrunnea gets posted, but as of February 19th, I’ve seen the first confirmed seasonal section Morchella from Georgia and section Distantes from California. So with the season taking off here’s almost everything you…
Robbie Flynn Mycology Contest
Robbie Flynn was a founding member of the WMMA. She was passionate about foraging for mushrooms and in awe of their creative potentialities. Robbie was the famous mushroom woman of the Atlantic Hotel, educating people about mushrooms and taking them out on forays long before the WMMA even existed. As a graphic and mixed media artist, she was drawn to the craft potential of mushrooms, especially how they could subvert the use of plastic. Feeling particularly inspired by one of our mushroom paper making workshops, she decided that she wanted to support larger community efforts to uncover hitherto unseen abilities and…
Learn With Us!
Join us as we explore the Fungal diversity of the Big Sky state, building a greater appreciation of our special ecology along the way.
