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.
