So You Want to Be a Mushroom Observer?
The Life and Times of Nathan Wilson, Founder of MushroomObserver.org
“How many mushrooms around here actually are edible?”
It was just a few minutes before closing at the coffee shop where I was writing Mushroom Monday. People had gathered their belongings and were beginning to filter out. Two men were standing just a few feet from my table when I heard one pose the question to the other.
What a coincidence, here I was sitting a few feet away and writing about mushrooms. I couldn’t help myself and jumped in.
“Do you guys like mushrooms?”
“He does”, the original inquirer nodded at his friend.
“Well I’m writing about them right now. Here, look, I think this is a Heterobasidion”. I showed him my laptop screen and scrolled through the article I had written so far.
“Yea, looks like it” he replied.
This made me pause. Was he being polite? Heterobasidion, the conifer root rot, was not your everyday fungus. Personally, I didn’t know the mushroom’s ID when I first found it, so what were the chances the average Joe at Coffee-O would know this cryptic mushroom?
Well, after a little more conversation, I realized this was not your average Joe. I had serendipitously crossed paths with Nathan Wilson, the founder of mushroomobserver.org — a free, open source website dedicated to mycology and citizen science. At this point, I realized I’d seen Nathan speak at the Northeast Mycological Federation’s annual foray in Cape Cod this past fall. I didn’t realize he lived in the area, and I certainly didn’t expect what else he had going on.
Nathan explained that he was set to retire from his job at the end of the month, and quoted the Gary Lincoff adage “just quit your job and dedicate the rest of your life to mushrooms”. Completely by chance, our Lincoff-esque lifestyles had crossed paths at this small cafe on a grey day in early March. I had only lived in the area for ten days prior to this fateful encounter.
Finding Fungi
Nathan first found fungi as a ten-year-old at his parents’ cabin in Humboldt County. A neighbor had stopped by to inform his family they had something of note growing in their yard: chanterelles.
Nathan’s grandmother was actually good friends with the famed Pacific Northwest naturalist Margaret McKenny — known as the “Grand Dame” of PNW mushrooming. Subsequently, Nathan’s mom had gone on walks with Margaret and used her existing knowledge to confirm they were in fact chanterelles. The family cooked them with dinner that night and he was hooked.
As a ten-year-old, finding food in the forest was the coolest thing possible. That was the original catalyst for the following half a century of fungal fascination (‘half a century’ were his words — I wasn’t going to date him like that). Impressive nonetheless.
He began to collect and identify all the mushrooms he could find. With the help of his mom, as most ten year olds need, he joined the Mycological Society of San Francisco and the two started to collect with the club.
One day, a mysterious piece of mail arrived in the family’s mailbox. A copy of David Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified had been delivered without any discernible sender. He devoured it, reading the 1,000+ page tome front to back several times. The book served as additional fodder for his lifetime fungal odyssey.
He went off to Reed College in Portland, Oregon and then received a Masters from UPenn. Originally in interested in biology, he pivoted at Reed to experimental psychology as it involved animal behavior (and less chemistry than biology). He was also interested in computers. He began coding in the seventh grade and was able to use his programming prowess to design and run the experiments required for both degrees.
While in school, Nathan reached the philosophical crossroads of whether he’d be a software developer with an interest in mushrooms, or a mycologist with an interest in computer science. He ran the numbers (particularly the financial ones) and, believe it or not, the former makes a lot more sense if you want to have a stable life and support a family.
This prompted his return to the bay area for a job at the Stanford Research Institute where he would work on AI and robotics. This was back in the late 80’s, mind you. He eventually obtained another graduate degree in Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz which he used as an opportunity to develop an early computer-based mushroom identification system.
While in Northern California, he joined the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz. There, he met a mushroom mentor in Greg Ferguson, and then eventually David Arora — the author of the book that got him fascinated with fungi at a young age. Greg helped Nathan key into specific habitats, filling in gaps in his knowledge, before he sadly passed at 40 of congenital heart disease.
An opportunity to work in the animation industry had Nathan relocate to Los Angeles where he joined the Los Angeles Mycological Society (LAMS). He served as president of LAMS for a period of time, but found that he wasn’t getting everything he wanted out of the club. The time had come to start his own project.
Founding MushroomObserver
The idea for an open, online, mushroom observation database had been percolating since graduate school. However, the foundations of MushroomObserver were actually created during a weekly art class. The class had served as a refuge for his mycological and artistic interests while the bulk of his time was split between work and raising two children with his wife, Andrea.
In 2006, Nathan launched a straightforward, blog-style mushroom observation website called MushroomObserver (MO). Users could post photos of a mushroom they found, identify the fungus, and if they didn’t know the identity, they could rely on the community for identification.
He told a few friends about MO, and they told a few friends, and soon the passion project mushroomed into the largest collection of digital fungal photos in the world. He and his MO partner, Jason Hollinger, soon found their free-time usurped by writing code to keep up with the growth of the site.
An important aspect in the development of MO was to keep with the whimsical nature of mushrooms. A “let’s not take this too seriously” attitude — the same kind that originally attracted Nathan to David Arora’s books. The website formalized into a registered 501-(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Mushroom Observer Inc. “It’s been successful beyond my wildest dreams”, Nathan says.
The Germination of iNaturalist
In 2008, a couple years after Nathan launched MO, a graduate student at UC Berkeley reached out to Nathan because he had a similar idea for his own graduate project. The student, Ken-ichi Ueda, wanted to create a platform that documented all forms of life — not just fungi. Out of this graduate project, iNaturalist was born.
Personally, I learned my plants and birds before I learned my fungi, so I was an iNaturalist user a few years before I became a MushroomObserver. The iNaturalist AI identification is helpful for plants (and can be fairly reliable for getting fungi to the genus level) and I found it a great tool for learning. I can only imagine what Charles Darwin — who sometimes waited years to identify a single organism — would think if he knew one day you could identify a plant on the spot with a device that fits in your pocket.
Truthfully, I was also intimidated by MushroomObserver. I thought it was a place for devout mycophiles (which is not the case, MO is for everyone of all capabilities). I didn’t make my first post on MO until I had an encounter with a rare mushroom.
A Glitch in the Programming
Nathan had chosen the software development track over one in mycology back in college, but a new opportunity presented itself where he could feasibly do both at once. In 2010, he accepted a position at the Encyclopedia of Life (a project designed to document all living species known to science) as Director of Biodiversity Informatics. Nathan, Andrea, and their two kids relocated from Los Angeles, California to Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
From its inception, Nathan viewed MO as a passion project. This belief was only augmented after he took the position at EOL where he now scratched his biodiversity informatics itch during the day, so he didn’t always have the mental bandwidth for MO in his free-time.
After several years at EOL, the program lost its funding and Nathan was unexpectedly on the job market. He took a job in Boston at a start-up accelerator, but that involved a severe commute that ate up even more time and energy. Meanwhile, he was still reeling from how things ended at EOL. He feels that if he could’ve found more funding, possibly written more grants, things may have shaken out differently. “Honestly, I felt like a failure”, he says about that period of his life.
Nathan even told the board he planned to step back, he felt checked out and he wasn’t able to provide for MO the way he knew he should. Fortunately, the board stepped up. Jason and some other members (notably Joe Cohen) took on the extra work and, while doing so, encouraged Nathan to return. Moved by the buy-in from others, Nathan returned to the platform motivated.
While all this played out in New England, over on the West Coast the founders of iNaturalist made the platform their full-time occupation. Popularity for the platform skyrocketed and it has since displaced MO as the largest collection of digital fungal photos in the world.
Nathan doesn’t harbor any ill-will against iNaturalist, but acknowledges that there’s certainly a competition. Or at least a tension. As the popularity of iNaturalist has risen, it has taken users away from MushroomObserver. Yet, Nathan still believes that MO can carve out a niche and help the mycological community in ways that iNaturalist cannot. That was part of the motivation to go full-time fungi.
Where iNaturalist Falls Short
Nathan will tell you that iNaturalist doesn’t cater to the specific needs of the mycological community. Particularly because mycological taxonomy is nowhere close to that of birds and plants. Many mushroom species are cryptic and require at least a microscope, if not DNA sequencing, to properly identify.
Further, iNaturalist descriptions for mushrooms just pull from Wikipedia descriptions (most of which aren’t even written, let alone accurate). MushroomObserver encourages and collects a variety of other characteristics like habitat, odor, color, and taste.
Nathan wants MushroomObserver to fill this important informational gap for the mycological community. As DNA sequencing becomes more prominent, we’re seeing many species are hyper-localized to their geographic region. This causes fungi names to change at a pace that makes any field guide out of date the moment it gets printed. MO could provide local clubs (and individuals) with a dynamic, accurate, and evolving catalogue of their local fungi.
Another avenue for MushroomObserver is an idea of Nathan’s that predates even MO. A Consortium of Digital Mycological Resources — an online container for mycological websites. A Library of Congress for mushroom websites, resources, and blogs. Like the one you’re reading now.
All in all, MushroomObserver has the potential to help not just the mycological community, but the scientific community as a whole. Nathan wants MO to be a platform that teaches people about fungi and helps them understand these overlooked organisms, and now he finally has the time to take it there. The kids are in college, the house is paid off, and the retirement accounts have matured — so now, when Nathan runs the numbers, all signs point toward fungi.
Rehydrating the CCMS
Flash back to that fateful day at the cafe and I asked Nathan, “are you involved with Cape Cod Mycological Society? I joined the Boston club, but I’d love to get involved with the local club.”
“Well, the CCMS is a bit defunct, so I’m going to be pretty involved with the Rhode Island club. They’re fairly new and have a lot of good momentum.” We left it at that, exchanged contact information, and went on our way. I biked home buzzing with excitement.
After a few days, I reached out to Nathan to ask if I could interview him for Mushroom Monday, and also reiterated the desire to resurrect the CCMS. The idea marinated in his brain, and evidently sat well enough because he then reached out to the original CCMS founder, Wesley Price.
It wasn’t long before the three of us were in a different coffee shop, talking shop. Wes owns his own contracting company, so he doesn’t have the time — but fortunately Nathan and I have oriented our lives toward having the capacity to breathe some life back into the club (or “rehydrate some cells,” in fungal terms).
Since that first time we all sat down together in late March, we’ve now held two in-person meetings and two mushroom walks for the CCMS. The first walk on Saturday, May 24th, drew a whopping thirty participants and yielded fifty-six fungal species. Now, we’re working to harness that fungal curiosity, find more club stalwarts, and see if we can’t establish a thriving, citizen-science oriented, mycological community out on the Cape.
Are You Eating Your Own Dog Food?
It’s a saying in the programming world, so I was told. It means do you use the software you developed in your day-to-day life? As he begins this new chapter of life, Nathan wants MushroomObserver to be the Blue Buffalo™ of dog food. Check that, more like the really nice refrigerated dog food that humans could eat and find enjoyable. That’s the kind of dog food he’s trying to eat.
He anticipates MushroomObserver and the CCMS will build off each other. The two masts on the schooner navigating his fungal life odyssey. They’re both blowing in the same direction: toward the advancement of science and a better understanding of fungi for all of humanity. The good news is a rising tide lifts all boats, and the tide is coming in on the Cape.
Acknowledgements
Thank you for reading. I want to thank Nathan for sharing his life and love of fungi with us. He took the time to sit down for an interview and also read through this to make sure everything was accurate. I should also thank Coffee-O for cultivating a place where you can both write and meet with friends comfortably (even though Nathan is more of a Daily Brew guy).
Lastly, check out mushroomobserver.org and come to one of our CCMS walks out on the Cape :)
Upcoming
This weekend I’ll be over in the Catskills helping host our spring Friends of Fungi weekend with the Catskill Fungi crew. There’s still time to sign up, and there are day tickets available if you can’t make for the whole weekend.
The full moon is technically Wednesday, but the best time to see it will be Tuesday evening,
Aubrey
References for Images:
Image 2: SRI International, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Image 3: https://www.goodfon.com/films/wallpaper-madagaskar-multik-zhivotnye.html
Thanks for a great article and the intertwined history of iNaturalist and mushroomobserver.org.
Yay!!! Great write up on Nathan and MO. 🙌 hahah rehydrating cells