[sudo-discuss] Impromptu mushroom foray tomorrow, Leona Heights/Merritt College

[Peter Werner]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Impromptu mushroom foray tomorrow, Leona Heights/Merritt 
College
Date: 2014-03-09 17:57
 From: Peter Werner <germpore at sonic.net>
To: Merritt Microscopy list <MerrittMicroscopy at yahoogroups.com>, BAMS 
List <BayAreaMushrooms at yahoogroups.com>, Nerds for Nature BioBlitz group 
<nfn-bioblitz at googlegroups.com>, Ron Felzer <rfelzer at peralta.edu>, 
Loralei Dewe <lldewe at gmail.com>

Hi - I'll be leading a mushroom foray in Leona Heights Park and perhaps 
the main portion of Merritt College campus tomorrow (Monday) at 10 AM to 
Noon. It's a short-notice, strike-while-the-iron-is-hot event, scouting 
out the possibility of a more formal and widely-announced event next 
week.

Meeting place: York Trailhead, across Campus Drive from Merritt College. 
Map here: https://goo.gl/maps/CJw08
NOTE: The first part of the foray is "Leona Heights Park", NOT "Leona 
Canyon Regional Open Space", the latter of which has a trailhead on the 
other side of Merritt College, a considerable source of confusion. Leona 
Heights Park is a benignly neglected property of City of Oakland, and 
generally a place where amateur naturalists can operate without official 
sanction. Various Merritt classes take advantage of its proximity as a 
site for nature walks.

Afterward (noon) - for those who are interested, I might be able to lead 
a small group through mushroom microscopy at the Merritt College 
Microscopy classroom if there is interest.

For those who are not familiar with wild mushrooms in California - wild 
mushroom fruiting follows a definite seasonal pattern, analogous to the 
large scale blooming of flowering plants during a given time in Spring, 
and is variable dependent on weather conditions during a given year. The 
majority of mushrooms in California fruit in late Autumn, after the 
first large rains of saturated the dry soil, and generally before 
temperatures become their coldest. Smaller fruitings of often different 
species of mushrooms generally follow through Winter and into Spring.

This year, due to extremely unusual weather conditions, we are having a 
full scale fruiting of fall mushroom species some 3 months late. We are 
probably at the peak of our mushroom season now, and it may or may not 
extend further depending on if more rain will come in the next week or 
not.

Peter