South Vancouver Island Mycological Society
CTV reports on the appearance and removal of the 2024 crop of Death Cap mushrooms in Oak Bay. The video features SVIMS ex-president Andy MacKinnon.
For a more extensive interview with Andy about this issue, listen to the recent CFAX 1070 radio broadcast of the August 26 Mornings with Al Farraby show.
Michael Beug’s second edition of his illustrated key to mushrooms in our area, Mushrooms of Cascadia, is now available. Unlike his first edition, which we had trouble getting in Canada, this volume should show up in some of our bookstores. It can also be purchased online in Canadian dollars.
It is a much more handsome volume than Michael’s first edition, with better typesetting and layout. He has also added two sample walkthroughs of his key at the front to show people how to use the book.
The coverage continues to be impressive. The index of scientific names at the back has about 1700 species names. There are now 1100 photographs. All but 3 of the photos are by Michael himself or from the photographs of Harley and Kim Scates Barnhart, which Michael curates.
Michael has brought the scientific names up to date and has done a thorough rewrite of the text. This time he has included location information, so we can tell whether the mushrooms are found North America, Europe, Asia, and/or Africa.
— Kem Luther
Breaking news! In Telluride, Colorado, on Sunday, August 18, 2024, SVIMS ex-president Andy MacKinnon received the Lincoff Award for Significant Contributions to American Mycology.
Previous receipients of this award include David Nichols and Paul Stamets.
(Accompanying photos are from the 2024 Telluride festival parade.)
NEW General Meeting day of the week and time:
7pm arrivals; 7:15pm start.
1st Thursday of the month, September to May except January.
Guests welcome! Bring your mushrooms to be identified.
St Luke’s Hall
3821 Cedar Hill Cross Rd, Victoria, BC V8P 2M6
And our first speakers of the new season are
Ann McCall is a mycology enthusiast with a particular interest in taxonomy and ITS barcoding. She joined SVIMS in 2022 to connect with a community of like-minded individuals while advancing her understanding of mycology.
With a background in engineering and a life-long passion for the sciences, Ann finds joy in deepening her knowledge of fungi while actively contributing to citizen science. She regularly participates in citizen science initiatives aimed at documenting all macrofungi in North America, and hopes to make DNA sequencing more accessible to SVIMS members.
When she’s not exploring forests in search of mushrooms, Ann can be found baking tasty treats or adventuring in her self-converted campervan.
Mo is a third year student studying forest biology at the University of Victoria. She has been apart of SVIMS since 2019, and has been doing nature photography since 2017. Her dad and older brother taught her to use a camera, and through lots of trial and error she has slowly improved over the years. She enjoys finding unique species of fungi all over Vancouver Island to photograph. Alongside photography, Mo enjoys reading, writing, and painting.
We caught mushroom fever around 2015, having no formal mycology training, we began learning about and hunting mushrooms every chance we got. We moved to Vancouver Island in 2020, largely to chase a longer mushroom season than Manitoba has.
Josh was so fortunate as to come across the first of the Ophiocordyceps on a Western Carpenter ant in 2021 and we later found a large number of specimens at that site.
Treasure hunting for edibles in the forest has been a deep passion for both of us and we hope to have many more mushroom hunting years ahead of us.
Mushroom Identification workshop with the iNaturalist program and website.
Sunday, July 21st, 2024
10am-12pm
Sign up link and Victoria location is in an email to members from SVIMS President on Friday, July 19.
2. Special General Meeting
your vote counts, as we are a membership-driven club:
JULY 22nd, Monday
at 7pm
ZOOM ONLY – 15 minutes, max
The link to the meeting is in an email to members from SVIMS President on Friday, July 19.
Just one week left to submit your photos for the 2025 SVIMS Calendar.
Send your photos to Jaz Grenier email link . (This link is live, but the email address in the poster below is not.)
SVIMS members made one final spring outing, this time to Royal Roads. About 20 people, under the leadership of Andy MacKinnon and Kem Luther, searched diligently for mushrooms for almost 90 minutes, but not many mushrooms revealed themselves. A recent spate of dry weather had ended the spring mushroom season early.
About a dozen species were recorded (iNaturalist records are here). The mushroom in greatest abundance was the Panther Amanita, Amanita pantheroides. About 15 caps of it showed up. Some were small and old and had only a slight resemblance to the mushroom seen in field guide pictures.
A big thanks to all the event organizers. Photos by Steven Strybosch.
