Metchosin Biodiversity Project

Twenty-four hours, four Metchosin properties, ten experts, eighty guests, uncountable drops of rain, and 165 species of fungi. Such was the math at the Metchosin's third MycoBlitz on November 6 and 7, 2015. Numbers, though, tell only part of story. For many of the experts and guests, the 2015 MycoBlitz was a time to celebrate the raw fungal energy of places such as Metchosin, to appreciate the smells and colours of the mushroom caps that emerge in our autumn woods, and to hobnob with others who share the same fascinations.

The MycoBlitz kicked off on Friday night at the Metchosin District Council Chambers. A large crowd gathered for the 80th Metchosin Talk and Walk lecture. Adolf and Oluna Ceska, a couple at the centre of fungal research in British Columbia, presented the results of their decade-long continuous monitoring of the mushrooms on Saanich's Observatory Hill. The Ceskas, recently honoured by a mushroom name (Cortinarius ceskae) and a scholarship endowment in their names at the University of British Columbia, showed charts and pictures of their work. They have found more than 1300 different species on the Hill. Their research is one of the world's longest continuous studies of a single fungi site.

At 9:00 am the next day, experts and guests met under cloudy skies at the parking lot of the Metchosin Municipal Hall. Leaders organized the crowd into four groups. After signing in group members, searchers headed out to Blinkhorn Nature Park, Section 28, Section 25 (Metchosin Wilderness Park), and Camosun College's Van der Meer Reserve. As they left the Hall, rain began to pelt the pavement. Over the next three hours, everyone would get a little wet.

Once at their search sites, the four groups encountered a surprising array of mushrooms. While this has been a good year for mushrooms in BC as a whole, even over most of Vancouver Island, the southern end of the Island where Metchosin lies has not seen the usual abundance of fungi. Get enough eager searchers together, however, and even the hidden will reveal itself.

The search groups returned to the District Office grounds at noon. They brought their mushrooms into the Council Chambers, where tables had been set up to sort the mushrooms and dropcloths laid to protect the carpet. While the experts began to arrange and label the fungal finds, searchers went to Metchosin Community House where the Metchosin Biodiversity Project had arranged a bring-your-lunch film festival (popcorn and drinks provided). Attendees watched the film "Know Your Mushrooms" which combines material from the famous Telluride Mushroom Fest with animation and archival footage (and a neo-psychedelic soundtrack by The Flaming Lips). They then viewed the "Andy and Kem Fabulous Fungal Film Fest," a collection of mushroom clips from the Internet.

At 2:00 pm, the 2015 MycoBlitz guests made their way back up the hill to the Metchosin District Office to see what the experts had done with their mushrooms. The researchers had worked hard over the two hours of the film festival, grabbing lunch on the fly (delicious food organized by Mairi MacKinnon, with soups by Mairi and Eileen O'Donnell, buns donated by Cobbs, bread by Kem Luther, and sweet baked goods by Royal Bay Bakery). Guests found hundreds of mushrooms laid out on the four double tables. Crowds pressed around the tables to touch and smell the shrooms they had helped to collect and to talk with the experts about what they were looking at.

The four table complexes represented the four locations at which mushrooms were collected. Visitors were surprised by the lack of duplication between the tables. The 280 labelled specimens on the four tables comprised 165 different species. Scattered among the 165 species were almost a dozen mushrooms that residents of Metchosin have been known to collect for the table, including Hedgehogs, Chanterelles, Pines, Laccarias, Shrimp Russulas, and Cauliflowers.

At the end of the show, everyone pitched in to restore the room to its original condition. Experts drifted over to Andy and Mairi MacKinnon's house for a final supper together. Thanks to these experts, the BioBlitz/MycoBlitz database now contains, among its 2180 species, more fungi than any other category of organisms.