We had a great turnout for the Mycoblitz! Enjoyed seeing and meeting everyone. Terrific collection of observations! And I'm getting great feedback. I have some immediate requests and will be formulating some later Journal posts on more subtle points.

First -- please go into iNaturalist (easiest on your desktop or laptop) and assign every fungi and lichen observation made by you in Green-Wood (past, present, and future) to the Green-Wood Fungi Phenology Project. You have to do it manually for now.

Second -- make sure each observation is about a single organism. Don't include a stick fungi photo and another gravestone lichen photo in the same observation. Separate into two! If you made an observation with images of more than one organism (like lichens) create a different observation with the same photos and call out in the Notes what the color or other distinguish feature is of the organism of the observation.

If you have any questions, concerns, or confusions, contact me (@pcpalmer3) or Sigrid (@sigridjakob).

More soon!

We are starting to see Spring fungi in abundance thanks to the rain! One great way to improve your observations is to use iNaturalist to locate flushes of fungi that others have recently found so you can get first-hand experience with how these things can appear. This iNat observation is on a hillside overlooking Crescent Water (right next to the weather station) that is showing a large flush with couple of coprinoid species and what I believe are some psathyrella. I've created this step-by-step guide to locating fungi in the field using your phone.

I'm also seeing a few observations that are less thorough than we'd like, and my sense is that folks are still new to all this. So I'm putting in this link to a document we developed for the Mycoblitz that summarizes guidelines for good quality observations that we can include in the FunDiS project.

It has been a slow fungal spring so far, which is typical. Rain is possible over the next few days so things might perk up, but things don't really get going until late June/early July (with enough rain).

In the rush of April happenings I failed to properly call out the work of Hannah Kingsley-Ma, who wrote the very fine New York Times article A Cemetery's Big Secret: Lots of Weird Mushrooms which highlights our project and is responsible for bringing in new members and just great general publicity for Green-Wood. Hannah is also a project member and Green-Wood neighbor. She has done lots of other interesting writing and producing which you can check out on http://www.hannahkma.com.

Finally, it seems the slime molds are starting to appear. They are always a fun surprise. Nice dialog in this observation: (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/80161259)

Notable dialog here (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/80144318) concerning identifying Pluteus, a genus of saprobic fungi that starts appearing mid-spring in Green-Wood and continues through the fall.

Two Pluteus species are most common in Green-Wood: P. petasatis (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=green-wood-fungi-phenology-project&subview=table&taxon_id=347897) and P. cervinus (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=green-wood-fungi-phenology-project&subview=table&taxon_id=60782). P. petasatis has a scalier cap and tends to favor wood-chips; P. cervinus tends towards stumps. Michael Kuo of MushroomExpert.com says examining spores is the most definitive way of telling the two apart (https://www.mushroomexpert.com/pluteus_petasatus.html).

This steady, drenching rain is going to bring new flushes of fungi -- yahoo!

When you are out in GW and finding fungi, take the high road in terms of data quality. Study our standards (particularly the Photography section) to make sure you are making good iNat observations. The highlights: avoid old specimens; capture a picture of the surroundings; ensure your location is sufficiently accurate (more to come on this); and please record the undersides -- the gills and stem. Make those images sharp and clear! You ideally need four images: the top, the side, the stipe and base, and the gills. Excavate that mushroom from the ground if needed!