Forest Mushrooms of the Pacific Coast

A five-part fall webinar series

Join Maria Morrow and Christian Schwarz for a comprehensive introduction to the forest mushrooms of California and the Pacific Northwest. Over the course of this series we’ll cover foundational topics ranging from the fundamentals of mushroom identification to basic fungal biology. We’ll also discuss the fascinating complexities of the bigger picture: Patterns of ecology, evolution, and biogeography. The series will close with opportunities for field excursions with the instructors and community-science challenges to participate in over the course of the upcoming years!

• Part 1: Introduction to Mushrooms – October 19th
• Part 2: Mushroom Ecology along the Pacific Coast – October 26th
• Part 3: Forest Pathogens of the Pacific Coast – November 2nd
• Part 4: Mushroom Explorations – November 9th
• Part 5: Gaps in our understanding / Future Directions / Threats and Changes in the coming decades – November 16th

All webinars will be recorded and available for viewing for three months after purchase.

10% of your class registration fee is being donated to the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s Fisheries Department.

Your Teachers for Forest Mushrooms of the Pacific Coast.

Maria Morrow is a professor of botany and environmental science at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California. She grew up in the wonderfully damp city of Seattle and somehow managed to learn nothing about fungi until she moved to California in 2012 and took Terry Henkel’s Forest Pathology course at HSU. Since then, she has been digging in the duff, looking at logs, and even prodding at poop to get a better understanding of this mysterious kingdom of life. She studied fungal genetics and forest pathology at U.C. Berkeley and is currently working with the Humboldt Bay Mycological Society to survey the macrofungi of Redwood National Park. You can find her on iNaturalist as YipKiyay or every third Wednesday of the month on Zoom with HBMS.  

Christian Schwarz studied Ecology and Evolution at UC Santa Cruz, where his interest in the world of fungi became irrevocable – their seemingly endless forms (from the grotesque to the bizarre to the sublime) feed his curiosity. Christian now teaches Natural History of Fungi to undergraduates, and is a research associate of the Norris Center at UCSC. is co-author of Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast, and now spends his time seeking, photographing, collecting, teaching about, and publishing research on the macrofungi of California and Arizona. He is a research associate of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, and is assembling a mycoflora for the California Channel Islands. He has also served on the IUCN Red List Working Group for North American Fungi, advocating for habitat conservation focused on fungi. He is passionate about biodiversity in general, and especially in the philosophy and practice of community science (especially through the use of iNaturalist). You can find his blog at www.Biodiversiphile.com