SVIMS
South Vancouver Island Mycological Society
SVIMS Spring Foray at Royal Roads
On Saturday, April 16, SVIMS had its first local, non-lichenized mushroom foray in more than two years. About two dozen people showed up at the back entrance to Royal Roads and spent two hours looking high and low for spring mushrooms. Steve Strybosch, Mel Hesz, and David Walde coordinated the registration and sign-in (and, we are happy to report, lost no one in the deep woods of suburban Victoria). Kem Luther and Andy MacKinnon came along to help with identification and Elora Adamson helped with the species photography and recording.
Fifteen mushrooms were found and IDed. You can see the list and pictures on iNaturalist. (The exact IDs of mushrooms posted on group sites such as Mushroom Observer and iNaturalist may change after posting as experts weigh in). One of the highlights of the foray was finding the beautiful snowbank orange peel cup fungus, Caloscypha fulgens. With a little encouragement from Andy, this ascomycete put on a dazzling display of spore dispersal. See the short clip in this post, courtesy of Mike Gold.
More to come on spring mushrooms, with a foray in Metchosin on Saturday, April 23, 10 am, and a Zoom talk on spring mushrooms on Thursday, April 28, 7 pm (see previous post for details about the talk).
Luther and MacKinnon -Spring Mushrooms Presentation
On April 28, 2022, at 6:45 we have our “May” meeting, so watch for the e-mailed link which will come before then. Kem Luther and Andy MacKinnon will make a Zoom presentation on Spring Fungi of Vancouver Island. Note that the book Mushrooms of British Columbia mentioned in the bios on the poster is already in bookstores.
Presentation / Meeting with Britt Bunyard
Lives of Fungi – A Natural History of our Planet’s Decomposers is a new book by Britt Bunyard, the Editor-In-Chief of the journal FUNGI. He will give us a preview and tell us some of the amazing stories. He has visited us in Victoria before and you can expect something special.
Cowichan Lake Foray 2021
Register for this great event.
The Cowichan Foray for 2021 is now fully booked. Thank you for registering. It will be a great weekend.
Lake Cowichan Foray – Weekend of October 22 – 24, 2021
The Lake Cowichan Foray weekend is a go and members are submitting their registration form for this great annual event. The location, Lake Cowichan Conference and Education Centre is on a 44 acre forested site. This site and others in the Cowichan Valley area will be used to forage for fungi, led by mushroom experts. This will help participants identify terrain and discuss the variety of mushrooms and species we have in British Columbia.
More information and registration form can be found at this link: https://svims.club/docs. Don’t miss out on this event.
Covid protocols applicable at the time of this event will be followed.
If you have additional questions, please contact Kurt Raeder at svims.treasurer@gmail.com . Please use “Attendance” as subject title.
This is a member’s only event, so if you have not renewed or want to be a new member please do so.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Britt Bunyard presentation and foray March 2020
Britt Bunyard, editor of Fungi Magazine, made another visit to SVIMS in March. Britt gave an amazing presentation on Amanitas (his book on North American Amanitas will be out in 2 months and his beginner’s guide to mushrooms in the fall.) A version of his talk is available on YouTube.
On Saturday, March 7, 2002, about 30 SVIMS members joined Britt and Andy for a fungal walk through Metchosin’s Blinkhorn Park. The group found over 30 species. These were entered into the Metchosin Biodiversity Project database of observations and species. You can view the species and pictures at the Project’s iNaturalist site.