About
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Amanita_muscaria or Fly Agaric
If you live in the Peninsula and want to learn more about the wonderful world of fungi or what we call mushrooms, well this place may be just what you are looking for.
The Peninsula Mycological Circle is a “Mycological group dedicated to individuals and families who are interested in mushrooms, who live on the San Francisco Peninsula and the South Bay, and who are interested in a local group to share our knowledge and experiences.”
* Please note that mushroom identifications or comments on edibility provided in this club or on this page are the opinions of their author & are not necessarily correct.
We hope to reduce the number of fungi-phobic people out there by providing good information and references. It is estimated that there are about 1.5 million species of fungi in the world but only about 90,000 or so have been identified and classified. Mushrooms are the fruit of these fungi and many are truly beautiful and fun to see in the field. Most mushrooms are edible but only a small number are what are called” choice”, such as my favorite the Boletus Edulis (porcini) and fewer still are toxic or dangerous to eat, while none are poisonous to the touch. There are many myths about mushrooms such as in fairy tales were they are called toadstools. So don’t fear them, learn about them and enjoy them as I do. To get started get a book or two or take a mushroom walk with us and come to some meetings.
Our meetings are the first Tuesday of each month from October to April at the Redwood City Library.
We also have a Yahoo Group you can Join.
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something that I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!
Wade: Want to send your club a flyer about the new UC Press title, Field Guide to Mushrooms of Western NA. Can you send me the mailing address?
Thank you, Don
Mondy Lariz
2353 Venndale Ave
San Jose, CA 95124
I am interested in joining penmc. Do I need to sign up through yahoo? I already have two e-mail addresses. Could I use on of those as a point of contact? Ellen
do it on the facebook page here is the link
http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/189141453489/
So this is out of context, but… the Santa Cruz Fungus Federation’s website doesn’t provide their new email address, making one use a pre-arranged Outlook setup, which the library computer i’m using doesn’t have and wont let me install, so i can’t reach them. The link to the Bay Area Mycological website won’t work, dunno if the website’s down or what? So, you’re my only lead right now. Please send SCFF my email address if you would, and maybe even forward the following if it’s not too much hassle?
I used to live in the woods near UCSC in the mid-late 90s, and always saw my favorite mushroom nearby during the wet season, though i can no longer recall exactly which months it would appear. I privately thought of it as the “mango mushroom” because it was red, green, and yellow with very little blending at the very distinct edges of patches of color, like certain mangoes (unlike those that blend evenly from yellowish to reddish orange). The caps were an inch or less in diameter, and varied fairly widely in shape, from pretty round to pretty asymmetrical, some wrapping all the way around the bottom to the stem, some with open gills beneath (Sorry if i’m using the wrong terms, i’m not a mycologist).
I returned two years ago and found that a real slob had been camping in the area in the intervening years, leaving a garbage bag or three full of rotting clothing and food trash tucked into almost every redwood stump on the entire hillside of several acres (i’m guessing he was both lazy and trying to keep others from camping in nearby redwood circles). I’m sure this changed the microbiology of the soil, as the duff under and around the bags was smelly and moldy down to the dirt. I hauled all the trash away and visited the area at least weekly through that entire wet season, and never saw a single “mango mushroom”. It has since occurred to me that mycology must suffer non-native invasions just like flora and fauna. I sure hope this wasn’t the last of a rare species no one had ever bothered to document. It’d break my heart! Have you ever heard of it???
I added a link to BAMS and the site works fine.
I will not forward your email but here is the email address you want: webmaster1@fungusfed.org
Good luck!
Mondy