South Vancouver Island Mycological Society
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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.
SVIMS is sad to hear of the passing of mycologist Dr. Jim Ginns. He died on April 29, 2024.
Jim and his wife Anne retired to Penticton, BC in 1997. He has made presentations to SVIMS several times and was a member of the Pacific Northwest Key Council. He is the author of numerous scientific publications including Polypores of British Columbia.
Anne died in January of this year. The South Okanagan Naturalist’s Club has published a tribute to Anne and her work.
Jim and Anne were also noted conservationists. For nearly 50 years they owned an ecologically diverse 23-hectare parcel of land bordering Thetis Lake Regional Park. It was their goal to see the land permanently protected. The Ginns donated a significant portion of the value of the property to our regional land trust Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT) to achieve this goal.
In 2018, they also donated their 42-hectare property in Gatineau, Quebec to the municipality of Cantley as a nature reserve, now called Parc écologique Ginns.