Fred Rhoades Background


I


n 1970, when I was a graduate student at Oregon State University, my mycological mentor, Bill Denison,


assigned me to the job of collecting and identifying all the mushrooms in several plots in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Cascade mountains of Oregon. I knew what a mushroom was but, frankly, at that time I could hardly tell a Russula from a Tricholoma. I did collect a great many things that now rest quietly in the herbarium at OSU. But I really didn’t begin to start to feel confident about identification until 1974 when I agreed to teach a mushroom ID course at Portland State University (jointly with Elwin Stewart). Tere is no better way to learn something than to attempt to teach others that something. In 1977, I moved to Bellingham in


northwestern Washington state to take the position in cryptogamic botany at Western Washington University (WWU, affectionately known as DubDubU). For those of you not fully aware of what cryptogams are, they are the spore-producing, plant-like organisms, including the fungi. My Ph.D. was on the population biology of the important, nitrogen-fixing, northwestern lichen, Lobaria oregana, so I was ready to teach courses in both mycology and lichenology and even the unrelated slime molds which were covered in previous mycology classes. I was to teach


courses in bryophytes, so mosses and liverworts (and the occasional hornwort) were other areas to learn about while teaching. Te bryophytes are, in fact, plants, unlike all the other cryptogams but many botanists do not know them well. Also included are the seaweeds and algae but WWU had a phycologist who was covering those areas.


inexpensive, paperback edition came out in the late 70s, just as I was beginning at WWU. As the years have gone by, there have been more and more resources that work well in our area: first, David Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified, and now a plethora of guides aimed specifically at our mushroom-rich region. Resources for lichens have similarly improved over the years and now even for the bryophytes. We are waiting for the slime molds. Another problem is


the huge load of terms and jargon involved with each of these groups of organisms. Being different from plants (but also similar to) has resulted in special vocabulary to describe the features of each group, to identify them and to discuss their lives in their worlds. A single course to beginners covering all these cryptogamic wonders turns into a course in Latin


Te problems with teaching about the


cryptogams Teaching about all these cryptogamic


groups can pose problems. A primary one is the availability of background resources for students. Tere were good texts for general mycology but, for northwestern mushrooms, most teachers had been dependent on books that focused on European species. Tat all began to change with the publication of Orson Miller’s Mushrooms of North America which included many of the species of the Pacific Northwest. An


and Greek. One wants to be specific in describing things but I have always found a short phrase using common words is better than using the specific terminology. In the early 1980s I attended a


Northwest Scientific Association meeting at which the late Jim Riley, a US Forest Service lichenologist/ botanist, gave a slide show featuring his stereoscopic views of lichens and alpine plants. He used two carousel projectors, projecting left and right views through cross-polarized filters. Te audience wore corresponding filter glasses to get the left and right views into the left and right eyes. THIS WAS A VERY IMPRESSIVE SHOW and I was hooked.


Winter 2022 FUNGI Volume 15:1 9


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