The Alberta Mycological Society conducts several mushrooms forays each year. What exactly is a foray? We search through a variety of habitats to find all types of fungi hiding there. Sometime we are out looking for edible mushrooms, sometimes medicinal mushrooms and sometimes – we’re picking all fungi to bring back for identification, photographs, and to record in our Alberta Database. The Database is one of our major projects — to document what fungi are found in Alberta.
These forays can be anywhere from 2 hours to 3 days long and take place in the Rocky Mountain foothills, northern Aspen Parkland, and southern Boreal Forest ecozones of Alberta. If you enjoy fresh air, the outdoors, a leisurely pace through all types of terrain and weather, the possibility of taking home fresh edibles, some scientific jargon, and wonderful companionship with those of us who are fairly obsessed with all things fungal, this may be the activity for you!
In 2011, to encourage members throughout Alberta to get together and pick some mushrooms we initiated our “Foray in Your Neighbourhood!” If you are near an urban centre we have scheduled these forays every Wednesday evening throughout the summer, so please come out and join us. For those of you further afield we have some Regional Reps you can contact to join in the outings OR just go out on your own, in your Neighbourhood or even in your back yard and pick your own mushrooms. You can send us photographs or use our Forum to get some help identifying the mushrooms you pick.
For a Regional Rep in your area please Contact Us.
Every year we hold our Great Alberta Mushroom Foray in a different location somewhere in Alberta. This is a fun, intensive and scientific weekend of mushroom picking, identification and lectures where we bring in Mycologists from all over the world. All the fungi picked are identified, photographed, recorded in our Database, with many of the specimens being preserved for posterity and deposited into herbaria somewhere in Canada. These forays are meant to add to our knowledge of fungal biodiversity in Alberta. The foray is open to all members and we especially encourage beginners to attend as we hold an Introductory Mushroom Course at this foray.
Exact locations of the foray sites are available only to current members of the Alberta Mycological Society. If you wish to participate at a foray but are not a member, please Contact Us.
Foray attendance is voluntary and is undertaken at your own risk. Attendees are responsible for transportation and accommodation logistics.
Please download our Foray Guidelines to assist you preparing for a foray and to assure you’ll have a safe and enjoyable time looking for fungi
Click on Schedule for larger image of 2012 information.