Group of characters work together annually at Rhode Island BioBlitz to find spore-producing organisms
By Colleen Cronin /
ecoRI News staff
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| Members of the fungi team search for specimens near a stream on Narragansett Indian tribal land. (Colleen Cronin/ecoRI News) |
AUKE UT NAHIGANSECK/CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — While mycologist Lawrence Millman waited for his ride to the 24th Annual Rhode Island BioBlitz from the Providence Train Station, he did something he rarely does: he used his cellphone to call the reporter who was supposed to pick him up.
Millman only bought a cellphone two years
ago, but often refuses to use it and rarely gives out his phone number. He
usually arranges things via email, including rides, because he doesn’t own a
car and let his driver’s license lapse years ago.
For the Rhode Island Natural History
Survey’s annual BioBlitz, which he comes down from his home in Cambridge,
Mass., to attend annually, he wore an old T-shirt aptly screen printed with
mushrooms, hiking boots, and a bit of gray scruff.
He has been coming to the event — a 24-hour
scramble to survey the number of species at a particular Rhode Island site —
for a decade, he thinks. It’s one of the only mycological events that he still
likes attending.
“Male myco-files of a certain age are very
eager to compete with each other,” Millman said.
The fungi enthusiast doesn’t like crowds
and doesn’t much care for the norms and rules of life, much like the numerous
but elusive organisms he likes to study.
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| Mycologists Lawrence Millman, right, comes from his home in Cambridge, Mass., every year to participate in the Rhode Island BioBlitz. (Colleen Cronin/ecoRI News) |
Arriving at the Narragansett Indian Tribe’s
reservation in Charlestown, called auke ut Nahiganseck, meaning “We dwell
here,” Millman noted that dry conditions might limit what the fungi team could
find during the June 9-10 weapon-free hunt.
At each BioBlitz, participants split up
into groups based on the different types of organisms they are searching for,
with the goal of identifying as many species as possible within 24 hours.
Last weekend there were more than two dozen teams looking for everything from mollusks and mammals to mosquitoes and mosses.
For insects alone, there are nine teams
dedicated to different subgroups. (During the course of this BioBlitz, this
reporter learned that a ladybug is indeed not a bug, but a beetle, because it
has chewy mouth parts rather than “piercing” ones.)
Many participants come back to the same
groups year after year, some create T-shirts and give themselves nicknames. For
example, the vascular plant team goes by the “The Plantathletes,” and the
lichen group is known as “The Cladonia Crazies.”
The fungi group is called “The Fun Guys,”
although Millman asked that the name not be used in this story. The team didn’t
have matching T-shirts, but many were wearing mushroom paraphernalia, including
earrings, graphic tees, and socks.
Millman, who has been studying,
identifying, and writing about fungi the longest, is just one of several
mycologists in the group who participate in the annual species search.
Deana Tempest Thomas, who founded the Rhode Island Mycological Society, led the group
this year. Ryan and Emily Bouchard run the Mushroom
Hunting Foundation and have led the fungi group in the past.
Noel Rowe, who is actually a primate
expert, is an annual attendee and started the fungi group at one of the first
Blitzes, when he realized no one was taking a tally of these organisms.
Patrick Verdier is a member of the
Mycological Society and is usually identified as the man with the microscope
getting a closer look at fungi.
In addition to these more seasoned
mycologists, this year’s fungi fun group included many newcomers of different
ages and backgrounds. Millman said he thought this year’s group was the most
diverse fungi team, which helped lead the group to some interesting
discoveries.
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| Fungi specimens collected during the 24 hours of the BioBlitz. (Colleen Cronin/ecoRI News) |
After checking into Science Central — what
BioBlitz calls its tented-base camp, where most of the tricky species’
identification happens — and picking out fungi stickers to adorn their name
tags, the fungi team listened to the opening ceremonies, which celebrated the event’s
first time on Narragansett Indian tribal land.
Then, at exactly 2 p.m. last Friday, Rhode
Island Natural History director David Gregg sounded the blown horn, and the
mycologists scampered off to the woods.
The first find was Hydnoporia olivacea,
announced by Millman.
“Ahhh, the spreading olive tooth,” Emily
Bouchard said, as Millman spelled out the Latin name.
“Yes! That’s it!” he said, showing the
specimen to the crowd.
Spreading olive tooth isn’t the typical
fungus found in fairy tale pictures books or fancy French soups. It doesn’t
have a stalk or a cap. Instead, it’s got a small profile, it’s brown, and it
was growing on a fallen branch.
For the novice mycologist, it’s hard to
distinguish from the tree itself.
“We’re not going to find what we’d usually
find this time of year,” Millman told the group, because of the dry weather and
constant wind. “Most of what we are going to find is in and on the wood.”
Millman has no problem looking for these
types of smaller fungi; in fact, they are the kind he favors. He doesn’t care
for the rock stars of the fungi world, the edible kind, unless they are being
eaten by something other than a human. He once had a girlfriend, now an ex,
tell him he was much more interested in fungi than her.
“I said, ‘No, that’s not true. I’m more
interested in that, but not far more interested in that,’” he recalled, with a
laugh.
That perspective is much different than
some other members of the group, including the Bouchards. As founders of the
Mushroom Hunting Foundation, the pair teach people how to hunt for and cook
edible mushrooms.
“Larry is much more into small things,”
Ryan Bouchard said. “He just wants to take an interest in what they are and what
they’re doing in the ecology.”
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| A photo of a fungus under a microscope. (Colleen Cronin/ecoRI News) |
As the group made its way through the dry
wooded areas, they found a few more specimens, but decide to head to a wetter
area for better results.
Just before they reached a stream on the
reservation, someone found an interesting specimen on a tree branch.
“Wait a minute,” said Millman, halting the
group and pulling out a tiny microscope to examine further. The branch was
covered with cup fungi, he said.
“I say it’s a disco party because if you
find one, you’ll find a bunch,” Thomas said of the Pezizaceae family of fungi
that tend to grow in the shape of a cup.
“And Deana can hear the disco party from a
great distance,” Millman joked.
Moving on to the stream and its banks, the
collection of specimens kept growing.
Team members waded through muck and under
branches in between reminders that everyone needed to keep drinking water and
perform tick checks.
Rowe, the primate specialist, held a basket
full of makeshift specimen containers — pill bottles, fishing lure boxes, egg
cartons — to carry the fungi of various shapes, sizes, and colors back to
Science Central for further study.
He said part of what makes identifying
fungi specimens so difficult is the sheer number of them. There are thought to
be six times more types
of fungi than types of plants.
As he spoke, Samantha Young, who told ecoRI
News she only got into fungi this past year after meeting Thomas, found an
interesting specimen — a mushroom that appears to grow, at least partially, in
water.
Fungi do a lot of weird things, like this,
Thomas said. Some grow in extreme places, some glow, some smell like peanuts.
The bleeding mycena, which they
also found by the stream, appears to bleed from its stalk when it’s snapped.
Despite their oddities, fungi share a
common thread in their ecosystem importance. Many have a symbiotic relationship
with trees, and without fungus, nothing would decompose, Thomas noted.
After about a dozen more finds, the group
was shocked to look at the clock and find it was time to head back to Science
Central for dinner.
“Time flies when you’re having fun and fungi,” Thomas said.
Right after dinner and a talk from
Narragansett Indian tribal member Thawn Harris, it started to rain, which got
the fungi group a little excited.
During the nighttime walk, Thomas took out
a black light to look for more specimens. Many fungi glow under these lights
and expose themselves even better than during the day.
It was actually the draw of glowing
mushrooms that got Millman interested in fungi to begin with.
With a doctorate in English, Millman
traveled the world learning about oral histories of Indigenous people he said
he felt akin to because their separation from the rest of society.
Speaking with some First Peoples in Canada,
he had heard numerous stories of fungi and their medicinal or malevolent uses,
but it wasn’t until he spotted a bioluminescent mushroom on a trip to North
Carolina circa 1990 that he realized he needed to know more.
“That ignited everything, so to speak,”
Millman said. Among his dozens of titles, Millman has written several books
about fungi, both about the science and mythology surrounding them.
Having long used mushrooms as a muse,
Millman said he finds the current fascination with fungi, from their starring role in HBO’s
“The Last of Us” to their impact at fashion
shows, interesting, namely because their usefulness to humans is of little
interest to him.
“I actually like mushrooms better than I
like human beings,” he admitted.
Though he does like some people a lot,
including his compatriots at BioBlitz. He and Rowe struck up a friendship at a
Blitz years ago, when Millman dethroned him as the top mycology expert. But
Rowe doesn’t mind, and even has hosted Millman overnight while he visits Rhode
Island for a Blitz.
Thomas noted this BioBlitz was her and
Millman’s friendaversary. Two years ago, they met at the Natural History
Survey’s lone fall hunt. That year was record breaking for the fungi team
because autumn is prime fungi time.
“I was immediately impressed by her
mycological skills, which she continually denies,” Millman said of Thomas.
Thomas refers to Millman as her mentor.
And in some ways, the student is getting
the chance to surpass the teacher.
“She periodically one-ups me,” Millman
said. During the course of last weekend, there were a few things she identified
before him. “I keep telling her she’s a real mycologist, and she keeps denying
it.”
Looking at specimens under a microscope
last Saturday, 18 plus hours into the Blitz, the fungi became their own worlds.
Verdier wielded the machine and showed how
a tiny brown smug can change into individualized spores producing mounds,
cracked, and separated, like a lava flow on a mountain side instead of a fungus
on a branch.
He used the microscope to try to identify
some of the specimens that had been brought in from the field. It’s nearly
impossible to identify some species of fungi by sight only. In addition to using
microscopes, mycologists can look at spore imprints and even use DNA testing to
get an exact match.
The substrate, the material that the
specimen grows on, can also be important in identifying a species in a kingdom
where cousins look exactly the same but only grow on a particular plant or
tree.
By the end of the 24 hours, the fungi team
had found some 80 species, according to Thomas, though some were taken by
Millman, with permission from the Narragansett Indian Tribe, to make more
accurate identifications at home.
The number was surprising for the
conditions, Thomas said, but they were looking for small things and those
things added up.
Millman noted the size of the team also
probably contributed to the high count, although he said the number of species
they found doesn’t really matter to him. He’s not a big statistics guy, and to
him, the BioBlitz is about something more than the numbers can say.
“The virtue is getting outdoors, educating
people, coming up with some notion of how healthy a habitat is,” he said on the
drive back to the train station.
For all the similar events he has attended,
he said the Rhode Island BioBlitz is his favorite.
“I think it’s the best,” he said. “It’s the
most serious and the most amusing.”