Since the MycoConsortium of the Northeast is filled with people that have great interest in fungi, this presentation will focus on some of the wonders of the fungal world that Bob has encountered over the past decades. These examples are in his top list of fungi that represent the extraordinary nature of the fungal kingdom – they are fungi with a WOW factor.

Bob Blanchette is a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota where he teaches classes and carries out research on the biology and ecology of fungi that grow on and attack trees and wood. He has studied fungi from Minnesota’s old growth temperate forests to the rainforests of the Amazon and tropical forests of Asia as well as many investigations on fungi in the Arctic and Antarctic. His studies on wood decay processes have led to many collaborative projects around the world to help conserve ancient and historic woods including sunken ships, Old Kingdom Egyptian wooden statues, King Midas’ Tomb, expedition huts in Antarctica built by Scott and Shackleton and many others. He also has been involved with many ethnomycological investigations to understand better how Indigenous People from different parts of the world used forest fungi. A few of his current studies include investigating gigantic bioluminescent fungal networks in the Ecuadorean Amazon, using fungi to control invasive exotic species such as the emerald ash borer and buckthorn and the taxonomy of Ganoderma and other polypores.