Monthly Meeting March 6, MycoConsortium

Look immediately below this notice for details about the Monthly Meeting and Presentation by Kem Luther and Andy MacKinnon.

On the Membership Page, you will find a link to an upcoming presentation of the MycoConsortium about Mary Elizabeth Banning, an under appreciated mycologist of the mid-1800s. The presentation will be on March 13 at 7:30 pm.  You can also read there about the speaker, who is Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum and a professor of biology.  The membership page also has many videos of past meetings and past MycoConsortium presentations, and an introduction to DNA Sequencing.

SVIMS Meeting March 6, 2025 Andy and Ann

The March meeting this year (Thursday, 7:00 pm, March 6 at St. Luke’s Hall,  3821 Cedar Hill Cross Road, Victoria) will be “The Year in Mushrooms.”

Andy MacKinnon and Ann McCall will be doing a slide presentation about discoveries, changes, and surprises in the BC mushroom scene over the last eighteen months. They will chat about some of the most interesting local finds and about the bleeding edge (it hurts!) of what is what is happening in taxonomy and sequencing.

A hybrid meeting, both in person and online. Bring along any spring mushrooms you want to show or discuss.

SVIMS Meeting February 6, 2025 Paul Kroeger

7 pm start
Zoom only due to weather, members will receive a link

A Presentation by Paul Kroeger 

Paul has spoken to our club many times before, often in February. He is always entertaining and informative. Look below his photo to find out more about him. Paul’s presentation will be

Mushroom Misadventures

Mushroom cases with poison control BCCDC / DPIC. This is a review of interesting cases that show ways people get into trouble eating mushrooms, problems in identifying what people have eaten and some interesting observations and lessons on how to avoid illness from eating wild mushrooms.

Paul Kroeger has studied mushrooms for over fifty years and is a founding member of the Vancouver Mycological Society (VMS). Paul served as President of VMS for a few years, and is currently President of The Pacific Northwest Key Council. He is a major contributor to the mycological herbarium collections in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC and also contributed significant collections to DAOM Herbarium in Ottawa and DAVFP Herbarium in Victoria. He is a regular consultant for the British Columbia Drug and Poison Information Centre, and various other agencies concerned with mushroom poisonings and fungi in human and animal health. He coauthored, with Bryce Kendrick, Oluna Ceska and Christine Roberts, The Outer Spores: Mushrooms of Haida Gwaii published in 2012 based on a five-year study.

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.

Two Speakers in November 2024

This month we have not one but two speaker events. The first, on Thursday November 7, features our own Richard Winder, and the second, on Saturday November 9, features the editor of FUNGI magazine, Britt Bunyard.  Both have spoken to our meeting in previous years. See full information below.