VIRTUAL EVENTS
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For members only: Taxonomy Tuesday, a local virtual foray EVERY WEEK, on Tuesday evenings, and other club virtual learning opportunities. Members will be sent an email for virtual events with their Zoom link to join the meeting. This is an all year-round event. Basic Instructions can be found here. |
Online LECTURE SERIES for 2026
Lecture recordings, when available, are available only to NJMA Members.
The Online Lecture series for 2026 has ended.
Only NJMA Members are sent a link to attend these live online lectures. Members should renew their annual NJMA membership in January and not June to avoid missing lectures. NJMA Members also have access to the available past recordings in the Member Only Section of the website.
Only NJMA Members are sent a link to attend these live online lectures. Members should renew their annual NJMA membership in January and not June to avoid missing lectures. NJMA Members also have access to the available past recordings in the Member Only Section of the website.
Thursday January 22, 2026 7:30pm
The Mushroom Hunter's Kitchen In this talk, Chad Hyatt explores the often-overlooked nuances behind mushroom edibility and culinary use. From challenging conventional wisdom to rethinking flavor pairings, Chad will share insights into the art of cooking with mushrooms. Expect a fresh take. |
Speaker: Chad Hyatt has cooked in kitchens ranging from Michelin-starred fine dining to BBQ, from country club to gastropub. He is passionate about approachable comfort food, local, seasonal ingredients, and, of course, wild mushrooms. Chad dove into mushroom hunting shortly after beginning his cooking career, and quickly gained a local reputation for eating the “weird mushrooms” that nobody else collected. As his mushroom hunting knowledge improved, his kitchen skills began to open up doors to cooking and teaching. His new cookbook “The Mushroom Hunter’s Kitchen”, which includes non-weird species (thanks, Chad!) along with weird ones, allows us to share the experience in our own kitchens. What makes a mushroom "good" to eat—and who gets to decide?
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Thursday February 5, 2026 7:30pm
Surveying Black Mycologies
Surveying Black Mycologies
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Speaker Maria Pinto has a new book “Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me About Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival”.
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(Non-NJMA event - InPerson) Thursday February 19, 2026 6:00pm
Maria Pinto will be at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton NJ in Mercer County. This book event is free & open to the public so spread the word to non-NJMA members and on social media. This is a chance to meet Maria Pinto in-person and, perhaps buy her book and support retail booksellers. For more on that bookseller event go here.
Maria Pinto will be at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton NJ in Mercer County. This book event is free & open to the public so spread the word to non-NJMA members and on social media. This is a chance to meet Maria Pinto in-person and, perhaps buy her book and support retail booksellers. For more on that bookseller event go here.
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Sunday, February 22, 2026 10:00 am
From Waste to Wonder: The Mysterious World of Fungi That Grow On Dung Grab your coffee and join Drummond-Herdman, Darren Gordon and Sigrid Jacob for a deep dive into the fascinating world of coprophilous fungi—those that grow on herbivore dung. These fungi are surprisingly diverse, ecologically important, and strikingly beautiful. The lecture will feature time-lapse and macro photography to reveal their hidden details, growth patterns and spore dispersal mechanisms. A wide range of species will be covered, from well-known genera like Pilobolus and Panaeolus to tiny ascomycetes and evanescent inkcaps. Each speaker will also showcase a few species which are particularly special to them, including species that are new to science. 
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Three Speakers: Alfred Drummond-Herdman, based in Edinburgh, studies the often overlooked but ecologically important group that is coprophilous fungi. He uses macro time-lapse photography to reveal this hidden world to a wider audience. He is currently working on various taxonomic projects concerning the Bolbiteaceae and Psathyrellaceae, including the description of new species and the revision of a genus.
Darren Gordon is based in Dundee, Scotland, and has been studying fungi for the past four years. While he enjoys learning about all types of fungi, his primary focus is on coprinoids (inkcaps) and coprophilous species. His fascination began when he started incubating herbivore dung and was amazed by the incredible fungi that emerged. Darren particularly enjoys fieldwork - seeking out and identifying fungi in their natural habitats. He also helps manage several social media platforms, where he assists with identifying species from all over the world. Sigrid Jakob is a New York City–based amateur mycologist who has studied dung-inhabiting ascomycetes for the past six years. Her work combines field observation, microscopy, and DNA sequencing, with a focus on documenting overlooked fungal diversity in urban and natural habitats. She is particularly interested in species discovery, taxonomy, and making specialist knowledge accessible to a broader audience. |
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Thursday, March 19, 2026 7:30pm
The Domestication of Mushrooms and Micro-Fungi How have fungi co-evolved with humans? How might our interest and engagement with fungi shape their evolution, and how has this impacted human culture throughout history? This talk explores the science of domestication as it applies to both mushrooms and microscopic fungi. Come learn about the important and unexpected roles that fungi have played in agriculture, and how we might continue to use them today to ensure a more equal and sustainable food system. This will cover both past examples of fungal domestication from many different cultures, as well as present day examples and the relevance of genetic engineering. |
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Speaker: Charlie Bruder is a microbiologist whose work focuses on fungal evolutionary biology. He is currently based in Corvallis, Oregon, where he studies human fungal pathogens and the genetic basis of fungal domestication in the Uehling laboratory at Oregon State University. Originally from Indiana, Charlie developed a passion for mycology as a teenager while exploring the deciduous woodlands of the Midwest. Outside of research, he runs a small vegetable farm and hopes to apply permaculture practices to support his community while caring for the Earth.
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Thursday, March 26, 2026 7:30pm
Rust Fungi of the Northeast Rust fungi (Pucciniales) are highly specialized plant pathogens known for their remarkable life cycles and profound effects on agriculture, forestry, and natural ecosystems. The rusts have particularly complicated lifestyles involving a sequence of up to five distinct spore types that often require a jump between two unrelated host plants. This lecture explores the diversity and beauty of rust fungi in the Northeast, along with practical guidance for finding and identifying them. It will also cover their broader significance: their historical impacts on agriculture and forestry, the foundational work of early mycologists who documented and classified them, and their roles as biological control agents and even as weapons of war. |
Speaker: Andrew Cannon is an artist and amateur mycologist based in New York City. A member of the New York Mycological Society since 2015, he serves as the Society’s archivist. Since 2023, he has focused on researching the history and diversity of plant pathogenic fungi in North America, particularly rusts, smuts, and mildews.
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Thursday, April 16, 2026 7:30pm
The Mushroom Guru of Sligo Road: The Life of Sam Ristich Dr. Samuel Ristich (1915-2008) was a beloved figure in the mycological community for nearly four decades. He was born in Pittsburgh, PA and grew up in a Serbian-American family in Aliquippa. From boyhood he studied bird life and collected insects. He attended Slippery Rock State College and gained his Ph.D. at Cornell University. An entomologist by training and pest control scientist by profession, Sam forged a unique path in a post-retirement career as an independent scholar and charismatic educator in the study of mushrooms. While best remembered as an educator and mycologist, Sam was a celestial navigator during World War II, a civil rights activist, and discoverer of a bird thought to be extinct for over 300 years. With the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research he helped to lead one of the first environmental studies of the Hudson River. Sam was driven by a passion for teaching the intricacies of biological systems not only to advance critical thinking about nature but for social improvement and environmental conservation. He stimulated the founding of four mycology clubs and is memorialized today by the annual Samuel Ristich Foray of the Northeast Mycological Federation. This illustrated lecture by David Rose will explore Sam’s life in science and nature study. |
Speaker: David Rose is Archivist of the New Rochelle Public Library. He is a writer, amateur mycologist, and past president of the Connecticut-Westchester Mycological Association (COMA). His work as an archivist began at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden where he organized the papers of world-renown botanists and mycologists including Nathaniel Lord Britton, Arthur Cronquist, and Clark Rogerson. As a consulting archivist he has organized the records of the North American Mycological Association and the Charles Horton Peck Papers of the New York State Museum. David is a contributing editor to the journal Fungi; his column “Notes from Underground” has explored “the mycologically strange” with such essays as The Pilzbefallen, The Stinkhorn Monologue, Cryptogrammic Cryptogams, and The Kolyma Psychosis. David is also author of the book Friends and Partners: The Legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Basil O’Connor in the History of Polio. |
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Thursday, April 30, 2026 7:30PM
WHY ARE MUSHROOM POISONOUS, ANYWAY ? (and do the chemistries of death caps and fly agarics explain their invasions?) Amanita phalloides (the death cap) is an invasive mushroom. So is Amanita muscaria (the fly agaric). Lately, my lab has been wondering why so many species of the genus Amanita are stuffed so full of potent specialized metabolites, and we’ve been asking if chemistry is one mechanism invasive mushrooms use to spread. So far, we’ve got conflicting stories: As A. muscaria has moved through South Africa, its metabolites haven’t changed much. (And by the way, its metabolites seem to kill nematodes and not flies.) By contrast, gene expression data suggest A. phalloides is using its chemistry in new and interesting ways in its invasive Californian range. At this talk I’ll discuss our lab’s recent publications and hint at where we think this is all going. |
Speaker: Anne Pringle was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and spent her childhood traveling through Southeast Asia and West Africa. After completing a Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, she joined the faculty at Harvard University. She next moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she is now a Vilas Distinguished Achievement and the Mary Herman Rubinstein Professor in the Departments of Botany and Bacteriology, as well as Chair of the Botany Dept. She has given hundreds of talks to academic and popular audiences in multiple countries and has been awarded the Alexopoulos Prize for a Distinguished Early Career Mycologist, the Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Harvard University Graduate Student Council, the Fannie Cox Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching from Harvard University, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, the Mid-Career Mycorrhiza Research Excellence Award from the International Mycorrhiza Society, and a Fulbright U.S. Scholarship (taken to South Africa). Anne's research focuses on understanding the biodiversity of fungi. Her many papers on invasive mushrooms and lichens bear witness to the changes happening on Earth, and as a teacher her aim is to draw attention to fungi, revealing them as ubiquitous and essential species of our landscapes.
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Last Updated: 2026-05-10
