Get ready for a wild, gooey, and slightly creepy trip into the fungal underworld. Join The Natural History Museum of Cal Poly Humboldt for: Favorite fungi: I Love Rot. November 13th, 2026 Join Maria Morrow, Professor of Botany and Environmental Science in a weird and wonderful exploration of the strange lives of mushrooms that rot. Explore the different types of wood rot, discover the fungi behind them, and meet the mushrooms that they produce. Discover how decaying wood creates vital wildlife habitats. By the end you will be seeing the forest through the eyes of a fungal detective and falling in love with rot. Whether you are new to mushrooming  or a seasoned spore nerd, you'll leave with new ID tips, cool facts, and probably a few delightful shudders! Look Closer! Come for the Rot, stay for the science. 

Speaker Bio: Maria Morrow is a professor of botany and environmental science at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California. She grew up in the wonderfully damp city of Seattle and somehow managed to learn nothing about fungi until she moved to California in 2012 and took Terry Henkel’s Forest Pathology course at Humboldt State University. Since then, she has been digging in the duff, looking at logs, and even prodding at poop to get a better understanding of this mysterious kingdom of life. She studied fungal genetics and forest pathology at U.C. Berkeley. You can find her on iNaturalist as YipKiyay or every third Wednesday of the month at meetings of the Humboldt Bay Mycological Society.