THE MYCOLOGICAL

ASSOCIATION OF

WASHINGTON, DC

MAW Monthly Meeting: May

  • 01 May 2018
  • 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • 4201 Knowles Ave, Kensington, MD 20895

For our May meeting, we're going to learn all about lichens.  And how is this related to mycology, you ask?  Well - to vastly oversimplify things - a lichen is really just a fungus that evolved an appetite for algae and/or cyanobacteria along the way, then learned how to farm it.  So if you'd like to know more about these fascinating fungi (mostly fungi), please come join us on Tuesday evening to get ... the rest of the story.

In addition to being algae farmers, lichens can be also pretty cute to look at.  In our area, and to my eye, the top three on ascetics alone include: 1) Cladonia Cristatella otherwise known as British Soldiers because of the scarlet red apothecia which makes them look a little like British infantry from a bygone era; 2) Graphis Scripta, which looks as if someone were practicing calligraphy on the side of a tree, and; 3) Cladonia Pyxidata, which kinda looks like it could've been used as a goblet by those mythological and diminutive woodland creatures, pixies.  As an aside, I think we had a lot more imagination, and time to notice the little things, before we invented the internet.

Matt Nelsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum, will be our lecturer.  Matt studies how fungi have shaped, and have been shaped by, the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems.

- If you'd like to participate in a carpool, as either a driver or passenger, please go to the carpool application to try to find other participating MAW members.

Comments or questions? Contact us at info@mawdc.org.

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