Telluride Mushroom Fest: Serious Science at Fun Party

12 Aug Telluride Mushroom Fest: Serious Science at Fun Party

The 33rd annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, Saturday, August 16 –Tuesday, August 19, focuses on four main tracks within mycology: Culinary, Medicinal, Entheogenic, and Mycoremediation.

“When you see hundreds of festival participants dressed as mushrooms in our epic annual costume parade, you’ll have no idea that serious science is taking place beneath a public tent a few feet away,” said Matt Kostalek, vice-president of Aloha Medicinals.

Dr. John Holliday of Aloha Medicinals, guest speaker at 33rd annual Telluride Mushroom Festival

Kostalek and chief-scientific-advisor John Holliday, the internationally renowned mycologist at the helm of Aloha Medicinals, offered a grant of over $10,000 to fund the Telluride Institute Voucher Program science tent where DNA specimens of mushrooms will be prepared in Elk’s Park during this year’s Mushroom Festival.

Anthropologist and author Lawrence Millman says of the program, “The DNAing of voucher specimens is an excellent idea, for — in addition to the usual reasons — it will show the world that the Telluride Mushroom Festival is serious and scientific rather than, in the minds of many mycophiles, simply a celebration of shrooms (Psilocybes etc) in all their brain-altering glory.”

Gary Lincoff, author of the “National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms,” joins John Holliday to co-lead the Voucher Program:

“We have created a checklist of the mushrooms we have been finding in the Telluride area since 1981. We know the mushrooms fairly well, but we do not know how they relate to similar mushrooms elsewhere, especially those whose names are being used to represent the ones we are finding in Telluride,” Lincoff says of his hope for the Voucher Program.

Gary Lincoff, co-founder, Telluride Mushroom Festival

Lincoff laid the groundwork for the Voucher Program with mycologist Linnea Gillman, who has entered more Western Slope mushrooms into herbaria than anyone else. This year, Lincoff invited his friend and colleague, mycologist Noah Siegel to assist with the Voucher Program:

“You have hundreds of people in the woods collecting mushrooms, and a good deal of these mushrooms they collect are undescribed;’new to science,’ so here is an opportunity to take advantage of these Citizen Scientists,” says Siegel, who is excited about the open-air science tent.

For 33 years, the festival has offered a forum for intellectual exploration of the role mushrooms play on Earth, offering something for everyone, from guided forays in the San Juan mountains of southern Colorado to presentations on mushroom cultivation, anthropology, remediation and the important research being conducted by Maggie Klinedinst, psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit.

This year’s 2014 keynote speaker is Langdon Cook, a writer and lecturer on wild foods and the outdoors. His books include “The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America,” winner of the 2014 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and “Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager,” which the Seattle Times called “lyrical, practical and quixotic.”

Author Langdon Cook, 2014 keynote speaker, Telluride Mushroom Fest

Biotechnology researcher Dr. Ayman Daba, who focuses on mushrooms’ effect on the treatment and reversal of cancer, is a board-certified clinical laboratory scientist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Daba will discuss the antitumor activity of mushrooms and explain his research findings that show that their efficacy is due to indirect host mediated immunotherapeutic effect, which means that, rather than attacking the tumor, mushrooms reverse cancer by boosting the host’s immune system overall.

Other presentations include “Mycopigments: Pick Mushrooms and Dye with Alissa Allen,” who shares local mushroom dye palettes with fungophiles and fiber artists alike. Mushroom identification is her primary passion, but mycopigments are her obsession. In addition using mushrooms to dye wool and silk, she is currently exploring lichen dyes and mushroom pigments for paint. Alissa will offer 3 workshops during the Mushroom Festival, which are limited to 20 participants each, so please book early to reserve your space.

Each day also features guided mushroom forays, expert lectures, culinary events, like a Chef’s Mushroom Cook Off Street Party on Saturday, August 16, featuring live music and tastings of dishes prepared by Telluride’s best chefs.

For those wishing to delve even deeper into hands-on mycoremediation and cultivation, and perhaps begin a career in these industries, look for tickets to the all day Mycoremediation and Cultivation Workshops on Friday, August 15.

Rebecca Fyffe, executive director, 2014 Telluride Mushroom Festival and president, Illinois Mycological Association

Full event passes are available at telluridemushroomfest.org

For festival information, please visit us on the web or email festival director Rebecca Fyffe at rebecca@telluridemushroomfest.org.

And to read Rebecca’s interview with Noah Siegel about the Telluride Voucher Program, go here.

And for another interview with one of the scientists (Haley Toups) who is volunteering at the Telluride Mushroom Festival to help with the Telluride Voucher Specimen DNA Program, go here.