2019 March General Meeting: Else Vellinga (by Phil and Margaret Carpenter)

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, Else Vellinga.  Doors open at 6PM

Mycology in California started with the discovery of a few species during a break in the voyage of the North Pacific expedition. The discovery of new species has every been ongoing since that time. The main players during the more than 150 years of history will be put in the spotlight, and future directions of research in the state will be laid out.

Else Vellinga is a mycologist who is interested in naming and classifying mushroom species in California and beyond, especially Parasol mushrooms. She has described 22 species as new for California, and most recently worked at the herbaria at University of Calfiornia at Berkeley and San Francisco State University for the Macrofungi and Microfungi Collections Digitization projects. She got her training at the National Herbarium in the Netherlands, and her PhD at the university of Leiden, also in the Netherlands. The main motivation for her taxonomic work is that it lays the basis for efforts to include mushroom species in nature management and conservation plans. She has proposed a number of Californian and Hawaiian species for the IUCN global database of endangered species. She tries to keep current with the mushroom literature. And lastly, Else is an avid knitter and likes to use mushroom dyed yarn for her creations. She lives with her two cats in Berkeley, California.