OMS March General Meeting

Oregon Mycological Society monthly meeting with guest speaker Lorelei Norvell, Ph.D. , Phaeocollybia in western North America: Two decades of progress. The meeting begins at 7:30 pm.

The collection in 1991 of three slimy, brown-spored mushrooms with long "rooting" stipes in an ancient spruce forest on Vancouver Island was the start of a 20-year devotion to an intriguing genus, Phaeocollybia. Dr. Norvell, who has collected Phaeocollybia in the Pacific Northwest, Costa Rica, and Finland, regards Oregon as the “Garden of Eden” for these elusive agarics. Her doctoral research uncovered significant new insights for this intriguing and (alas!) non-edible genus, molecularly verified the specimens collected in Canada in 1991 as two out of ten new species, and culminated in the lavishly illustrated "Phaeocollybia of Pacific Northwest North America" (Norvell & Exeter, 2008).

An OMS life-member and founder of the PNW Mycology Service, Dr. Norvell is Editor-in-Chief of Mycotaxon, The International Journal of Fungal Taxonomy and Nomenclature, secretary of the Permanent Nomenclature Committee for Fungi of the International Association of Plant Taxonomy, BLM/FS identifier of PNW gilled and non-gilled mushrooms, a Mycological Society of America Fellow, and serves on the International Mycological Association executive board, among others. An author of numerous taxonomic and nomenclatural papers, she has also co-authored books on chanterelles (Pilz & al.) and Ramaria (Exeter & al.) The genus Loreleia honors her contributions to the study of omphalinoid (also inedible!) mushrooms.