SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER!!! A how-to on stalking the wild mushroom.

The opportunity to learn how to "seriously" hunt, identify and prepare wild mushrooms is upon us as long-time expert mushroom hunter Bill Warner has agreed to give his Mushroom Hunting for Beginner's presentation during our meeting on Thursday. (Incidentally, the same methods can be used "humorously" too.)

Bill is a past Vice President of the Arizona Mushroom Society and former Research Entomologist, who recently retired, he said, to pursue his avocations of beetle systematics and hunting mushrooms.

A second-generation native Arizonan from the Phoenix metro area, he has a working knowledge of the state's mushrooms, when you're likely to find the various varieties and favorable places to look for them. In addition, he'll go over what to look out for in order to avoid an unpleasant and potentially harmful mushroom experience.

And, as a bonus, once you find and have identified your mushrooms, Bill has some pretty good tips on how to prepare them too.

Explaining that because this is a beginner’s class and already has a ton of information, gilled mushrooms will only be covered from the toxicity side (including how to identify the genus Amanita and a few other dangerously toxic groups), as he says there are too many similar taxa in the very large number of gilled mushrooms and added that those will be covered in subsequent talks, for which hopefully he will be back to share with us.

Although there is no fee to attend this presentation, a donation jar will be available. We thought it only fair to take up a collection as Mr. Warner is driving in from Phoenix for the sole purpose of educating us in the ways of the wild mushroom and it would be nice to offer him compensation for his gas and possibly a meal.

If you love mushrooms, if fungi fascinates you, if you think you've got what it takes to be a mushroom hunter, then don't miss this!