Fungi of Iowa

There is a list of Iowa's fungi, completed by a couple of professors from Iowa State University. That list had 2524 species (and included 263 species of lichens, which I will treat later), but included a comment by Lois Tiffany that she thought there were somewhere around 3,000 species. The list can be found in the following reference:

Tiffany, Lois H. and George Knaphus, 1998. "The Fungi. Lichens, and Mysomycetes of Iowa: A Literature Review and Evaluation." Proc. Iowa Acad. Sci. 105(2) 35-44.

I feel fortunate and honored that I had contact with both professors when I was a student at Iowa State. Dr. Lois Tiffany was a diminutive but completely intimidating professor of botany. Her lectures were pleasant, as I remember, but her grading was pretty tough.

I did not have Dr. Knaphus for a class, per se, but he was my advisor when I did some student teaching. He was talkative and friendly and reminded me a lot of my favorite uncle.

Drs. Knaphus, Tiffany, and D.M. Huffman from Central College authored a book called Mushrooms & Other Fungi of the Midcontinental United States.

There is a group, the Prairie State Mushroom Club, that promotes appreciation and conservation of mushrooms. In addition, there seem to be several people currently studying fungi in Iowa. That group has an informative web site with lots of good photographs.

The photo on the right shows a fungus that is actually a pest species called cedar apple rust. Its scientific name is Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae. It has a fairly complicated life cycle, living on both cedar trees and trees of the rose family in different parts of its life cycle.

The photo on the left is a puffball, apparently Lycoperdon pyriforme. It was growing on the side of a piece of firewood.