Earthstar Examiner - May 2023
Spring Greetings
By Israel Tockman
Happy spring to you all! I hope this edition of the newsletter finds you out on the land in search of fungi-or at least prepping your foray pants with permethrin and readying your collection bags, sharpening your mushroom knives, greasing up your boots and tapping last year’s fungal bits from your baskets to make way for new specimens.
The winter wasn’t too much of a bear, but it’s still a relief to see redbuds glowing on the edge of a woodland and to watch the rivers swell. I’ve not been out in the woods, but I hear that the first morels are popping! Here’s Maxine with her first baby black morel of the year!
I don’t know about you, but I’m doing a rain dance and hoping for a much wetter summer than we had last year. I’ll be participating in a couple of forays, one in Forest Park’s Kennedy Forest on August 12th and one at LaBarque Creek Conservation Area on September 17th. I hope to see some of you there!
This edition of the Earthstar brings you a guide to some of the season’s MOMS forays, a story about a friendship forged in the joy of fungal adventure, an update from the chair of MOMS’ speaking engagement committee, another installment of the Myce’s Inheritance and a bright, springtime recipe from Melissa Clark.
Finally, we are always on the lookout for newsletter contributors! If you have stories or photos to share that are relevant to Kingdom Fungi, please contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We especially need articles on research and the science of mycology.
Adventure Friends
Story and photos by Stephanie Keil and Bethany Milligan
The love of mushrooms has always been in my heart, but really started showing in 2013. I had just gotten back from a most wonderful trip to Hawaii that involved lots of communing with nature. The trip reinvigorated my love of being outside, and I needed more! Shortly after, my good friend Bethany and I decided to join MOMS. I remember the first class so well. Maxine was talking and signing her book. Bethany and I are both pretty quiet, so we really didn't talk to anyone. We did each get a book signed from Maxine. From there, we took a few classes together and brought that knowledge to the woods with us. We labeled our outings as "The Adventures of Bethany and Stephanie," something we still do today.
A year or so after joining the club, spring of 2014, Bethany and I took one last adventure before she moved to Colorado. We drove down to Pacific, MO. The drive was gorgeous with just the right amount of clouds in the sky. We were still pretty new at foraging, so we didn't know exactly where to look. We covered plenty of ground that day. Pretty early on, we found a false morel. It was exciting enough to be able to spot and identify a mushroom.
Exciting, but still not what we were looking for. After hours of hiking around staring at the ground, we finally found the most beautiful morels! We barely believed our eyes. Once we found the first, we noticed them all around us. It was so satisfying. To this day they are still the best-looking morels I have ever found. I have gone back to that spot to look on several occasions since, but have not found any. I do know it is a very popular spot and have run into other mushroom hunters while searching there.
Once Bethany moved to Colorado, I was alone in the club. It was easy to find someone to come with me to the winter luncheons, but I wanted to be more involved. I did a few select things with MOMS over the next few years. I was so shy, but kept with it. Look at me now! I have found so many great people in MOMS, and love learning from other members. I loved going to talks (as long as I wasn't the one talking.) When I finally got a chance to chat with Maxine, I let her know I wanted to get more involved. She nominated me to be on the board in 2019. I took the gig and was so excited to be more involved. Then somehow it was a year later, and I was nominated to be president.
2020 was a tough year to take over. I was so amped to have a great start to the season with MOMS, then the world shut down. We had to cancel everything in person. This included NAMA, which was supposed to be held in Missouri that year. We adjusted as well as we could. We did zoom presentations, but of course it just wasn't the same. MOMS is about the people. We all missed the connection, but at least the woods were still there to meander in. Those little moments of normal helped us all get through.
Finally, 2021 came and the world started to open back up. That August I attended NAMA in Colorado. Bethany and I found our adventure time again. We had a blast! I picked her up from Fort Collins and headed into the mountains. We found tons of hawk's wings, were gifted boletes & found a little shop selling wild mushrooms. We ate so well that weekend! There was something magical about walking through burn areas and seeing fields of yellow arnica. We left the woods with our faces covered in soot and smiles.
2022 NAMA was to be held in Missouri and oh, was it dry. But we still managed to find a lot of species. Bethany found her way to Missouri to join me at MO-NAMA. The seed ticks kept us from venturing too far into the woods, but there was so much else to do. We found black trumpets, and I found one of the unknown species of the weekend. We harvested persimmons and learned how to use the seeds to predict winters. We both even talked to some new people! The adventures of Bethany and Stephany probably need to be a part of NAMA from here on out.
The Myce's Inheritance
Symbiotic Partnerships in Nature
By Joseph "Mycæl" Hafley
It seems that everywhere you look these days you can find examples of the "shroom boom". One ubiquitous example of this is the increasing popularity of cordyceps and other entomopathogenic fungi. Whether it be photographs of the many striking and at times shocking expressions of fruiting bodies sprouting from the heads and bodies of parasitized insect hosts, innovative cultivation methods of any scale, or even in pop culture like the hit HBO series The Last of Us and the videogame franchise it's based on. Many are understandably captivated by the bizarre and fascinating realm of cordyceps and other similar fungi, however, I find it to be only one vivid example of fungal symbiosis. As it happens, the examples of broad-spectrum fungal symbiosis are in fact evident everywhere if we know what to look for. So, let’s look a little closer, shall we?
Research has revealed some amazing partnerships in nature that are more ecologically mutualistic than the parasitic entomopathogenic species. I will briefly outline a few that I personally marvel at.
It is known that bears in the wild are prone to clawing and leaving large scars in the trunks of trees. In some places this has led to efforts by wildlife management agencies to increase bear-hunting permits to reduce the amount of tree damage which can lead to tree mortality. However, research shows that in some instances these bear markings provide an access point for many species of fungi to take hold and, in some cases, to spread from tree-to-tree using the bears’ claws and paw as a transmittal mechanism. Though interesting enough on its own, this may not be quite enough for most environmentally minded people to see as a valid cause to keep bear populations higher. This is where the amazing multifaceted benefits of fungi shine as they always seem to do once fully understood. Many of the species that grow from the claw scarring have been found to produce resinous droplets from their fruiting bodies through the process of guttation. These substances contain natural compounds that when harvested by bees can markedly decrease conditions that lead to wing deformity and other maladies that lead to death and hive collapse.
Another relatively recent study shows evidence that woodpeckers may intentionally transport fungal spores from tree-to-tree. The birds carry and then “plant” these spores by boring small "pilot holes" into the trees’ inner flesh. The fungus takes hold, weakens the wood, and the birds return and can bore deeper into the weakened wood to create cavities for nesting. This was an exciting discovery for me personally as several years ago (before reading about this study), I suggested this very possibility to a family member while walking through the wilderness and witnessing a woodpecker in action. The primary benefit of this partnership may be that it has a hand in helping the populations of several endangered species of woodpeckers displaced by deforestation adapt to nesting in tree species that may have previously proven difficult for them to bore into.
These are just a couple symbiotic partnerships in nature, and I encourage everyone to look beneath the surface and even find ways to help these partnerships thrive, thus becoming a part of the symbiosis yourselves.
