A Comprehensive Guide to Fungi of the Pacific Northwest
Mushrooms of Cascadia is a book for every mushroomer — from beginners to professionals alike.
Resources
Amanitaceae Studies
Rod Tulloss’ impressively comprehensive (and interactive) web portal for all things Amanita. Although global in scope, the focus is on North America. Includes a lot of cross-referenced microscopic and genetic data, and profiles for many species that are not yet formally described.
Cyberliber
Thanks to Cyberliber, digital copies of many journals, old books, and other mycology print resources are available for free online. The site is a bit clunky, and the scanned resources are not searchable and often must be paged through one page-scan image at a time, but this is an invaluable resource for engaging primary literature.
Danny’s DNA Discoveries
An exceptionally important resource for every mushroom enthusiast in Cascadia, this is Danny Miller’s heroic effort to get a comprehensive handle on the diversity of macrofungi in the Pacific Northwest through genetic sequencing. Frequently updated with brief but very current summaries of the state of knowledge.
Hebeloma
A great resource for Hebeloma, with deep background information and data from extensive original research by Henry Beker. Global in scope, with significant coverage of the western United States.
iNaturalist
iNat is one of the most vibrant community science projects in the world, and increasingly the default option for submitting and exploring records of biodiversity (not limited to fungi). Anyone with even a passing interest in natural history should consider creating an account and becoming familiar with the use of the tools of this platform (both the mobile app and the full website version). The importance of being able to network with a huge community of scientists, explorers, and enthusiasts around the world in real time, as well as the ability to easily create and explore rich datasets (including basic on-the-fly data visualizations) is hard to overstate.
Index Fungorum
This is a nomenclature database that also acts as a repository for species names and a publishing outlet for new names. An excellent resource for researching synonymy and priority naming issues. Remarkably up-to-date.
MycoBank
Repository of mushroom names, including their authors, dates and details of publication, and often much more (including some descriptions, and illustrations of microscopic details).
Mycology Collections Portal
MyCoPortal is an important resource for finding specimen-supported records of North American fungi. Historical herbarium specimens and their associated metadata are digitized and georeferenced, making it much easier to assemble comprehensive species lists for particular regions.
MycoMatch (formally MatchMaker)
MycoMatch is an invaluable resource, designed by Ian Gibson. It’s interactive computer-based key to fungi in the Pacific Northwest, with detailed descriptions of more than 4,200 species and photographs of ~2,300 species. It works by picking distinctive features of your mushroom from drop-down options, and getting presented matches with the features selected.
MykoWeb
Lots of great mycological resources such as digital copies of out-of-print books and journal articles. Additionally, it has “The Fungi of California,” which currently details nearly 800 species: .
North American Cortinarius Collections
Spearheaded by Shannon Adams, NA Corts is an online resource dedicated to the study and taxonomy of North American species of Cortinariaceae, with a focus on Cascadia. The site offers a growing set of detailed descriptions, pictures and identification tools for this diverse family.
Cascadia’s Mushroom Clubs
There’s no better way to learn about mushrooms than by surrounding yourself with the knowledgeable people of Cascadia’s many mushroom clubs. Most have monthly meetings throughout the mushroom season and offer forays to collect and identify fungi.
- Cascade Mycological Society, Eugene, OR
- Central Oregon Mushroom Club, Bend, OR
- Estacada Fungus Association, Estacada, OR
- Humboldt Bay Mycological Society, Arcata, CA
- Lincoln County Mycological Society, Newport, OR
- Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society, Bremerton, WA
- North American Truffling Society, Corvallis, OR
- Northwest Mushroomers Association, Bellingham, WA
- Oregon Mycological Society, Portland, OR
- Puget Sound Mycological Society, Seattle, WA
- Snohomish County Mycological Society, Everett, WA
- South Sound Mushroom Club, Olympia, WA
- South Vancouver Island Mycological Society, Victoria, BC
- Southwest Washington Mycological Society, Chehalis, WA
- Vancouver Mycological Society, Vancouver, BC
- Wild Rivers Mushroom Club, Brookings, OR
- Willamette Valley Mushroom Society, Salem, OR
