Written and posted by the late and great Gary Lincoff in the Telluride Mushroom Festival Facebook Group on April 14, 2014
I am the very model of an amateur mycologist,
And often tend to think myself a good agaricologist.
I know mushrooms that are good for you and others that are magical,
And how to tell the good from bad and bad from worse and tragical.
I’m very well acquainted too with matters microscopical,
I understand cystidia, both pleuro and dermatical.
In mushroom cultivation, too, I claim as well to know my share,
With many secret formulae for growing mushrooms in thin air.
I’m very good at doing taxonomical analysis.
I know the scientific names of mushrooms that are poisonous.
In short, if you’re in need of a good agaricologist,
I am the very model of an amateur mycologist.
I know the names and dates of all our eminent mycologists,
And who discovered who with whom, and who got slapped and who got kissed,
And who knows Latin well enough to know the latest idiom,
And the idiots who can’t even tell their ascus from basidium.
I know who stole what from whom, and who once fixed a club election,
Who stomps on others mushroom finds and who once ate a type collection.
I know who’s named what and who’s had mushrooms named after them,
And who the mushroom splitters are and their every evil strategem.
All these things and more I know, and now of mushroomers I sing,
Of the ins and outs and ups and downs and goings on in Fairy Rings.
In short, if you’re in need of a good agaricologist,
I am the very model of an amateur mycologist.
I read the latest articles on DNA taxonomy.
I know the clades and trees of molecular phylogeny.
I know that without sequencing a mushroom’s just a ru(o)mer,
And that some pros, alas alack, lack any sense of hu(o)mor.
So I never joke about their fundamental paradigms,
Like whether lost or found – or shifting like the sands of time.
It’s crucial to hold on to some shred of credibility,
By not conflating sequencing with premature senility.
To keep a foothold in both camps is good –
To broker peace in our myco-neighborhood.
In short, if you’re in need of a good agaricologist,
I am the very model of an amateur mycologist.
About Gary Lincoff (from wikipedia)
“Lincoff began foraging for wild foods, including mushrooms, in the early 1970s. He began teaching at the New York Botanical Garden where he continued to teach for 40 years. In 1978, Lincoff published a book on toxic mushrooms; and was shortly thereafter recruited to write Field Guide to North American Mushrooms for the National Audubon Society. The book sold over 500,000 copies. He held the position of president of the North American Mycological Association for nine years.
In 1981, Lincoff co-founded, with Emanuel Salzman and Andrew Weil, Paul Stamets and others, the Telluride Mushroom Festival. Lincoff wrote scientific papers in peer-reviewed academic journals as well as in popular science publications, and was a regular contributor to FUNGI Magazine. Books that he authored or co-authored include Guide to Mushrooms (Simon and Schuster), The Complete Mushroom Hunter, The Mushroom Book (Eyewitness Guides), Toxic and Hallucinogenic Mushroom Poisoning: A Handbook For Physicians and Mushroom Hunters, among others.”