Great Alberta Mushroom Foray 2024
Cold Lake Alberta
August 30 to September 2, 2024
The 2024 Great Alberta Mushroom Foray (GAMF) will take place in the beautiful boreal forest in Cold Lake, Alberta. Areas of the boreal forest are protected in Cold Lake Provincial Park. Foraying for fungi for scientific purposes is allowed with a permit. The GAMF is taking place on the September long weekend, starting on Friday, August 30 and ending at noon on September 2, 2024.
A view of Kinosoo Beach on Cold Lake from the Water Treatment Plant, located in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada. By Wolfmum – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78832188
The Energy Centre at Cold Lake
The Energy Centre fieldhouse, sports room and main hallways will serve as our meeting place starting with a participant potluck, with refreshments provided by the AMS on Friday evening. Meet and mingle to meet the scientists and the foray leaders and other participants. Saturday and Sunday we will meet to set out on forays, dine together and listen to our speakers to learn more about identifying fungi and biochemical aspects of fungi. Our finale on Monday will be an exposition of both identified and yet to be identified macrofungi of the region. Meeting, dining, identifying, and listening to presentations all to happen at the Energy Centre.
Forays:
During the weekend there will be 12 forays offered which explore the region. Some of which will occur in the Cold Lake Provincial Park; others will take place in Natural or Grazing areas or on private land with permission. Each participant will have the opportunity to take part in four different forays.
Permitted forays (aka Forays requiring a permit) in the boreal forest of Cold Lake Provincial Park
Cold Lake Provincial Park By Chaplain143 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60390499
Accommodation:
The Cold Lake Provincial Campsite has been booked for tenters and campers at the affordable rate of $120 per camper and $60 per tent for the weekend. If this type of accommodation suits you, please choose this option when registering for GAMF. If you prefer a roof over your head, there are several affordable motels and hotels in Cold Lake such as the Cold Lake, Alberta Bed and Breakfast | Lakeshore Inn (lakeshore-inn.com), the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cold Lake, an IHG Hotel – ReservationDesk.com, and the Hotel Dene & Conference Centre – Guest Reservations . If this type of accommodation suits you, please make your own reservations.
Expert fungal identification and presentations by:
Paul Kroeger, Michael Schulz, Martin Osis, Kyle Canan and Roland Treu.
Paul Kroeger is an AMS favourite for his vast taxonomic and biochemical knowledge of fungi. His expertise lies in his understanding of the myriad of ways mushrooms can poison you and hence he will be sharing with you a summary of mushroom poisoning cases from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control/ Poison Control for 2023-2024. Yes, mushroom poisoning is very real.
Paul Kroeger has also established himself as an expert on psilocybin-containing mushrooms by tracking the ancient use of these mushrooms first named Teonanácatl, Nahuatl for divine mushrooms, to the present-day research of psilocybin-containing mushrooms for medical treatment. He fondly calls this his “talk on magic mushrooms.”
As well, Paul will be circulating throughout the day either at the Energy Centre or joining a foray leader on a foray assisting with identifying the hundreds of macrofungi we are likely to collect.
Michael Schulz was a long time Board Member, having served as Vice President in the recent past from 2018 to 2023 and earlier in other positions for about a decade in the early 2000s. For his service on the Board and to the Society, at the 2023 AGM, he was named as a Lifetime Member of the Alberta Mycological Society.
Over the years, Michael’s contribution to the Society has varied but at most Great Alberta Mushroom Forays, Michael can be found close to his reference library, his microscope and his reagents. Michael is a key identifier of our foraged finds at the GAMF. He looks at the fungal spore shapes and sizes and he tests their tissue with KOH, and Melzer’s Reagent. His work contributes to the microscopic identification of macrofungi. Most of the participants use the macroscopic morphology of the fungus for identification.
In addition to this work this year, Michael will share with us an update on his work that contributes to the study of 60,000+ species to be featured in the Wild Species 2025 Report for Canada. This past year Michael performed the 2025 update of conservation ranks for the macrofungi of Alberta and Saskatchewan. For this, he compiled over 34,000 records of 2332 species of larger fungi in Alberta, and 851 in Saskatchewan, including updating names and taxonomy. Mike will present some of the most interesting findings, such as “Your Hebolomas are Wrong”, “The Hyperdiversity of (Not-so) Boring Crusts”, “The Pain of Pine Mushrooms” and much more!
Pictured below is a very large cedar and a selfie of Mike:
Martin Osis is another mainstay at the Great Alberta Mushroom Forays annually as he was on the organizing committee of the very first GAMF in 2006 and he has either been the lead, on the committee, or a presenter/identifier at every subsequent GAMF. Where have we foraged Greatly in Alberta? Just ask Martin. Where will we forage Greatly in Alberta? Just ask Martin. Don’t know if you’ve collected something special in Alberta? Just ask Martin.
Martin has also had an equally long association with the AMS Board of Directors and with the Alberta Mycological Society. In 1987, he was one of the first 45 members of the AMS way back when it was called the Edmonton Mycological Club.
As this GAMF, Martin will be found in the fieldhouse verifying identifications of hundreds of macrofungi based on his prior experience and the morphological characteristics of the specimens. Additionally, he will be providing his annual Introduction to Mushroom Identification.
For more information on Martin Osis and his photographs see his website Martin On Mushrooms
Martin on Mushrooms in a beautiful stand of birch and Aspen.
Photograph by Melanie Fjoser.
Kyle Canan is an avid naturalist, mushroom enthusiast, and lover of trees. Kyle is most fascinated with mushrooms and their incredible properties; medicinal, psychoactive, edible, etc. He collects and documents all the mushrooms he observes, preserving them in his personal ‘fungarium’, a storage system for dried specimens. He has created his own at-home lab that includes microscopes and DNA extraction equipment for Sanger and Nanopore barcoding/sequencing. Kyle is the founder of Ohio Mushroom DNA Lab where he sequences mushrooms that are sent to him as his dedicated job to mycology. He does this to further mycology and help document the fungal diversity of Ohio and all of the world. He believes there are thousands of discoveries still to be made in this current generation of mycology. Kyle is the Darke County coordinator for the Old-Growth Forest Network and with that he spends his field days in old forests finding new and rare mushroom species.
Kyle will be organizing the AMS to sample the DNA of the specimens collected at this year’s GAMF and then later holding this talk: Mapping North America’s fungal diversity with high throughput DNA barcoding
Roland Treu, Doctor of Natural Sciences
University of Munich
Roland Treu is an Associate Professor of Biology at Athabasca University. He is a mycologist and has contributed significantly to the study of mycorrhizae and ectomycorrhizal fungi. His research has been focused on the functional responses of ectomycorrhizal fungal communities to long-term fertilization of lodgepole pine stands, decline of ectomycorrhizal fungi following a mountain pine beetle epidemic, and mycoremediation of hydrocarbons with basidiomycetes. He has also conducted research on the accumulation of minerals by Leccinum scabrum from two large, forested areas in Central Europe. Treu has published several research papers in peer-reviewed journals and has been cited numerous times for his contributions to the field of mycology. Source: The Homeless Romantic
Listen to this podcast to learn more about Dr. Treu’s mycological contributions. Dr. Roland Treu | The Wonderful World of Fungi | #126 HR Podcast (youtube.com)
Roland Treu, Dr. rer. nat., will be speaking on Fungal Luminescence.
Hope to see you at the 2024 Great Alberta Mushroom Foray.
Karen Slevinsky
President, AMS
*Meals have been selected to accommodate GF, DF diets but please advise if there are any dietary restrictions that we need to be aware of?