Over the years, several Members of SVIMS have played roles in the Pacific Northwest Key Council (PNWKC). The Key Council has developed an extensive set of keys, most of them illustrated, for the various groups and genera of mushrooms. The keys can be found on the PNWKC site. A member of SVIMS, Ian Gibson, is responsible for the web presentation of the keys and has written some of them as well.
Ian Gibson, a member of SVIMS, is the principal author and initial programmer of an electronic synoptic key of the mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest. He now works with Danny Miller and 4 other team members. MycoMatch is a PC app that used to be called MatchMaker. It is free and can be downloaded using the button below. Similar lighter programs designed by three programmers are being developed for smart phones (iPhone and Android). They will be called MycoMatch Mobile.
Danny Miller, with Puget Sound Mycological Society and Pacific Northwest Key Council, now does the programming part of MycoMatch. He has created two other online resources. The first is a Pictorial Key of Pacific Northwest mushrooms, which imitates the method that field identifiers actually use when they identify mushrooms. It can be used directly on the web, on a smart phone, or from MycoMatch where web access is unavailable.
Danny Miller is also involved in the interpretation of DNA sequences of Pacific Northwest Mushrooms. He gave introductory presentations to SVIMS in 2017 and 2022. The latter is available as a video in the Members’ Section. He has created a website which shows detailed results as he works them out.
SVIMS maintains a list of the mushrooms identified on its various forays. The lists indicate the frequency of the sightings of the different species in our area.
Have a mushroom you need help identifying? Try posting a picture on the SVIMS Facebook page or to SVIMS Instagram.
Some useful sites for researching mushrooms on the web: