2024-25 Season

2024-2025 MCMC Monthly Meeting & Event Lineup

General Club meetings - All are welcome. From 5:00-7:00 in person and via Zoom:
We’ll socialize and talk mushrooms. If anyone finds any mushrooms, please bring them for show and tell.
All meetings will be held on the second Tuesday, from September through March.

September 10: FIRST MEETING OF THE SEASON
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Meet and greet, and catch up. Talk about ideas and plans for upcoming season.

October 7: FORAY - JDSF public foray
Join JDSF forestry personnel along with MCMC club members on guided walks in Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF). All are welcome.
Location: Camp One
Time: 9:30-12:30 - meet up at 9:30 groups will start heading into the forest around 9:45 so don't be late!
IMPORTANT: You MUST bring your JDSF mushroom permit to pick any mushrooms.

October 8: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speaker: Damon Tighe
Topic: Community Science: How to use iNaturalist and notable FUNDIS finds from Mendocino
Presentation will start with an introduction on how to use iNaturalist to document your fungal finds and how to do so without giving up your spots. Mendocino is one of California's richest counties for mushroom diversity and new species continue to be found there at a surprising rate. Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS CA) collections that have been DNA sequenced from the past two years really highlight how much there is still to learn about the complexity of species in Mendocino and the presentation will highlight some of these finds.

November 16 & 17: Fungi Festival 2024
Location: Caspar Community Center

December 9: FORAY - JDSF public foray
Join JDSF forestry personnel along with MCMC club members on guided walks in Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF). All are welcome.
Location: Camp 20
Time: 9:30-12:30 - meet up at 9:30 groups will start heading into the forest around 9:45 so don't be late!
IMPORTANT: You MUST bring your JDSF mushroom permit to pick any mushrooms.

>Note: Wednesday instead of the usual Tuesday
December 11: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speaker: Noah Siegel
Topic: Cascadia — A Fungal Paradise
The wet mossy forests of the Pacific Northwest host a spectacular diversity of mushrooms, a true fungal paradise! This talk will highlight this diversity, the unique habitats, and it's plethora of mushrooms

January 13: FORAY - JDSF public foray
Join JDSF forestry personnel along with MCMC club members on guided walks in Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF). All are welcome.
Location: Camp 20
Email: [email protected] to confirm your spot!
Time: 9:30-12:30 - meet up at 9:30 groups will start heading into the forest around 9:45 so don't be late!
IMPORTANT: You MUST bring your JDSF mushroom permit to pick any mushrooms.

January 14: CLUB MEETING - POTLUCK!
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Sign up or see what your friends are brining to the potluck.

February 10: FORAY - JDSF public foray
Join JDSF Biologist Robert B. Douglas on guided walks in Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF). All are welcome.
Location: Road 900 off Hwy 20
Road 900 is just off Highway 20 south and west side of the James Creek Bridge. You take the road to the right before crossing James Creek. There’s a big pull out to right before the bridge and a road to the right if you’re traveling eastbound. Coming from Wilits you would take a left just after crossing the bridge.
Email: [email protected] to confirm your spot!
Time: 9:30-12:30
IMPORTANT: You MUST bring your JDSF mushroom permit to pick any mushrooms.

February 11: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speaker: Chris Watkins
Topic: Chris and his family run Mendo Family Forage which not only creates delicious and thoughtful mushroom creations, but also gives guided tours & forays on the Mendocino Coast. Chris will be talking about the family business and how he got started mushroom hunting and guiding. He'll also go over some forest safety thoughts and show you some of the survival gear that he carries.

March 8: Broom Pull-ooza – Help Clean up JDSF
Join JDSF Staff for a family-friendly day of invasive species removal, trash cleanup, and fun. On Saturday March 8, join staff at the Camp One Day Use Area at 9 AM. Remember to bring work gloves, tools, snacks and water and check the weather. Learn more by checking out the flyer linked below. More Information

March 11: LAST CLUB MEETING OF THE SEASON
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg
Speaker: Thea Chesney
Topic: Fungal Range Maps: How We Build Them and Why They Matter
Understanding where an organism lives, and why, is an essential part of understanding its life history and ecology, yet we have been lacking in data for the geographic distribution of many fungi in our rapidly changing world. We will discuss the historical and current state of knowledge, as well as recent efforts to improve these data and discoveries that are both helping and sometimes confounding our understanding of fungal species distribution.

For a listing of past meetings, speakers, and events, visit The Archive.

2024-2025 Speaker Profiles

Damon Tighe

DAMON TIGHE works in the biotechnology industry supporting teachers at bringing cutting edge hands-on science into classrooms and moonlights as a naturalist in California.

He's a big user of the iNaturalist platform with over 80,000 observations and is a collector for the FUNDIS CA project.

He's seen and sequenced mushrooms from all over the world, including Australia, China, Madagascar, and Ecuador.

Noah Siegel

NOAH SIEGEL is one of North America’s foremost field mycologists; he has spent over three decades seeking, photographing, identifying, and furthering his knowledge about all aspects of macrofungi. He travels and lectures extensively across America, following the mushrooms from coast to coast.

Noah was the recipient of the 2022 North American Mycological Association’s Award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology. His primary research interest is on the taxonomy and systematics of fungi.

He authored, along with Christian Schwarz, Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast, a Comprehensive Guide to the Fungi of Coastal Northern California and Mushrooms of Cascadia, a Comprehensive Guide to Fungi of the Pacific Northwest, as well as A field Guide to the Rare Fungi of California's National Forests. He is currently working on Mushrooms of Alaska, with Steve Trudell and Kate Mohatt.

Please buy the books from the authors' website or your local book seller.

Chris Watkins

CHRIS WATKINS hunts and sells wild mushrooms. Chris and his family run Mendo Family Forage which not only creates delicious and thoughtful mushroom creations, but also gives guided tours & forays on the Mendocino Coast.. Contact Mendo Family Forage for more information.

Thea Chesney

THEA CHESNEY is a lifelong Sierra Nevada foothill resident and naturalist. She has had an interest in mushrooms (and plants, and the rest of the natural world) since early childhood, which gradually became an obsession.

She holds a B.S. in forestry from UC Berkeley. During her time at Berkeley, she spent plenty of time working and hanging out in the Berkeley mycology labs.

She worked on a mushroom survey crew around Mt. Shasta for several seasons, which allowed her to become intimately familiar with the fungal inhabitants and ecology of the area. Since then, she has worked a variety of field jobs, primarily as a botanist.

She teaches occasional workshops in mushroom and plant identification. Her fieldwork and her own studies of plants and fungi are centered in the Sierra Nevada and other mountains of California.