SVIMS Meeting December 5, 2024 Kem Luther & Andy MacKinnon

7pm – doors open
7:15-30pm – presentation begins

St Luke’s Hall
Victoria – 3821 Cedar Hill X Rd, Victoria, BC

  • Monthly Membership Meeting
  • Live streamed/hybrid – members will receive zoom link by email
  • Bring mushrooms to be identified by local experts
  • Snacks, tea, socialize!

Presentation:

“Fairies and Fungi: A Festive Ecology of BC”

Kem Luther & Andy MacKinnon

It’s December, and Andy and Kem are ready to put you in the holiday spirit!  Find out what makes Santa’s reindeer fly, how frost makes beards, where tipsy fairies toss their cookies, and how to escape from the fatal fairy ring.

Andy MacKinnon. Andy’s recent research interests include ecology of BC’s ectomycorrhizal fungal species. He was lead BC scientist for Environment Canada’s 2017 ranking of the province’s threatened and endangered fungal species. Andy has taught rainforest ecology field courses in Bamfield and Tofino (for the University of Victoria) and Haida Gwaii (for UBC). He has also taught mushroom identification courses in Tofino (for the Rainforest Education Society) and in Victoria. He is co-author of six best-selling books about plants of western North America and co-author of the Royal BC Museum Handbook Mushrooms of British Columbia. He is past-president of the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society (SVIMS).

Kem Luther. Kem is a naturalist and writer. He grew up in the Nebraska Sandhills, studied at Cornell, the University of Chicago, and the University of Toronto, and taught at Eastern Mennonite University, Sheridan College, York University, and the University of Toronto. When he moved from a home on Ontario’s Grand River to the southern tip of Vancouver Island in 2004, he developed an abiding passion to know the mushrooms of western North America. Besides Mushrooms of British Columbia, Kem is the author of six books, including Boundary Layer (Oregon State University Press, 2016). He has been secretary and speaker coordinator for the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society (SVIMS).

Kem and Andy, who both live in Metchosin, BC, are cofounders of the Metchosin Biodiversity Project (metchosinbiodiversity.com). They are enthusiastic participants, speakers, and field trip leaders for various mushroom festivals in southwestern BC each autumn.

SVIMS Cowichan Foray 2024

Ann McCall and Andy MacKinnon congratuate themselves on finishing the labels.

The annual SVIMS weekend at Cowichan, held again at the Cowichan Lake Education Centre, took place on October 25-27. Overall, it was a rainy weekend, but the showers paused for the morning and afternoon forays on Saturday. The event this year was organized and coordinated by Elora Adamson.

As in other years, there was a dinner at a Cowichan restaurant on Friday night. Some eager SVIMS people did a mushroom flashlight walk. On Saturday, the weekend attendees were joined by many who came only for the Saturday forays, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Bryce Kendrick and Shannon Berch take a closer look at some of the mushrooms.

As the mushroom specimens began to arrive, a team at the display room under the direction of Shannon Berch labeled the mushrooms and arranged them on the tables by morphological groups. Bryce Kendrick brought his microscope and examined the spores and microscopic features of some of the specimens.

More than 150 different species were IDed. The list can be viewed on the svimsinatadmin site. As usual, the totals may change as people from around the world chime in with ID suggestions. 

Sunday morning was the usual sharing event, with people telling about their favourite finds.

The asci of Tolypocladium capitatum seen under Bryce’s microscope.

This year a special attempt was made to ugrade the citizen science component. We were able to record all of the finds on iNaturalist, combining multiple field pictures with IDs made and more photos taken in the display room. About ten SVIMS members took on the tasks of field recording. Approximately 20 of the specimens were dried and sent in for sequencing.