2019 January General Meeting: Michael Beug - Should I have eaten that mushroom? (by )
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Please join us for our General Meeting at the Harvey West Scout House. Refreshments will be provided and informal mushroom ID from 7:00 - 7:30. A discussion of upcoming events will precede our speaker, Michael Beug.
Should I have eaten that mushroom?
Drawing on over 50 years in the woods hunting mushrooms and over 40 years on the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) Toxicology committee, Michael Beug describes the common identification mistakes that people have made when out mushrooming. This talk features the most dangerous mushrooms and what happens when you eat a poisonous species. You will also learn what features to look for when seeking edible mushrooms. He describes how to tell the good ones from the bad ones. His stories are both of the mistakes that people have made leading to poisoning and of the disappointment felt by people when they realize that they have left choice edibles behind
Michael Beug is Professor Emeritus of The Evergreen State College and an award-winning photographer, with photographs published in over 50 books and articles. He is principal author (with Alan and Arleen Bessette) of Ascomycete Fungi of North America: A Mushroom Reference Guide. He writes about mushrooms in McIlvainea, The Mycophile, Fungi Magazine, and Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming. He created 25 PowerPoint mushroom programs available through NAMA as a two-DVD set. He is a coauthor of MatchMaker, a free mushroom identification program covering 4,092 taxa with over 5,000 images of 1,984 illustrated taxa (www.matchmakermushrooms.com). He was winner of the 2006 NAMA Award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology. He is chair of the NAMA Toxicology Committee, chair the Editorial Committee and is past editor of the journal McIlvainea. In the Columbia River Gorge, he currently studies the unique fungal ecosystem associated with Quercus garryana where he has found roughly 50 unnamed Cortinarius species, many unnamed Hebeloma species, new species of Russula, a new Amanita, a new Polyozellus, a new morel and a new Sarcomyxa as well as numerous species previously thought to be restricted to California and Southern Oregon. His hobbies are organic farming and winemaking.