Calendar: Mushrooms and Paw Paws

One of the many colorful mushrooms we found this week

All this rain has been pushing up lots of mushrooms. We're headed to the Mycological Association of Washington meeting tonight with a whole box of them -- at the beginning of every meeting, and over the social break, there are experts who will help identify any mushrooms you bring in. We want to see how many we were able to identify correctly ahead of time!

Tonight's main presentation will be by Leon Shernoff, the Editor of "Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooms," on boletes: the incredible, colorful diversity of this family of mushrooms, and examples of how and why name changes occur in the fungi. "Three hundred years ago, all gilled mushrooms were placed in the genus Agaricus. Back then, all pored mushrooms were also placed in the genus Boletus. While Agaricus has long since been split into hundreds of smaller groups, the boletes have only had a few genera broken off...Come and learn what some of those small groups in the boletes are, and why some of them are now being recognized as new genera." Free, at the Kensington Park Library, 7 PM.

MAW may also schedule a mushroom hunting "foray" for this weekend, since the shrooms are so plentiful. Sign up for the meetup group, or send an email to forays@mawdc.org to be added to the mailing list for forays.

There are still a few spots left in our wild edibles walk to look for Paw Paws along the Potomac this Saturday. We'll stop for any interesting mushrooms as well, especially edible ones.

There are many other great things on our calendar this week, including some volunteer opportunities for the National Day of Service on Sunday, bike rides, canoeing, and hikes in and around Washington. Enjoy!