BAMS banner

event calendar

BAMS Monthly Meeting

Mikhael Crystallah-Selk: Mushroom Parasites
1002 Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Tuesday, March 26 | 7:30 - 9:30 pm


Mikhael Crystallah-Selk

This talk will cover Achlorophyllous plants, Fungal Molds, and other Fun Gis that just can't seem to live without each other. All photos were taken by me throughout California and Oregon. These plants and fungi truly opened my eyes to the intricacies of symbiosis. I'm excited to share my finds and see what piques your interests!

Mikhael is SOMA Science Committee Chairman, fungal ID expert, principal responder on the SOMA Poison Control Hotline, Sous Chef at Della Fattoria, and iNaturalist contributor with 4202 Observations and counting! He is also admin on dozens of Facebook groups.

Fifteen years ago, Mikhael blew out his back working in retail. It took him three years of physical therapy to teach himself to walk without a cane. Much of that time was spent slowly walking through the woods, where he began to pay attention to the amazing diversity of fungi surrounding him. A mild curiosity soon became a passionate new (for him) field of study. He found himself fortuitous enough to be learning from experts around the world allowing him to fast-track his studies. Since then, he has become involved in numerous local mycological clubs, and volunteers identifying mushrooms for others, online and in person. After briefly specializing in jelly fungi, he expanded his horizons to study taxonomy in general, volunteering hours per day pouring through observations. Personally chosen to take over the ID tables at their annual camp by the co-founder of SOMA, he recently returned from spending four days in the woods, putting names on hundreds of species, then arranging them by spore color, family and genus, to present to the 300 campers. All this is done in his free time, while maintaining a full-time job as chef for an award-winning bakery and diner.

If you've found mushrooms you'd like to identify, bring those along. Entrance to VLSB is on northwest entrance, under the stairs on the right (see details below). Doors open at 7:30. Meeting starts promptly at 8:00.


New BAMS Meeting Location

1002 Valley Life Sciences Campus Map BAMS meeting entrance

We're have a new meeting location: 1002 Valley Life Sciences Building. The entrance is on the north side circled below; look for a door to the lower level to the right of the main stairs. We'll have signs the night of the event. Best way to get there is to walk up from Oxford. Campus map can be found here.