Participate in the 2025 New York City Rare Fungi Hunt!

There are a surprising number of very rare fungi that call New York City home. Many of them we’ve only seen once or twice. Because these fungi are not just rare here, but rare everywhere we would love to find additional specimens for microscopy and DNA sequencing.

To help us find more of these rare species we’re officially launching the 2025 NYC Rare Fungi Hunt! We need more eyes on the ground to document and collect these unique species!

This year’s hunt covers 12 species. The good news is that all of them are distinctive and easy to identify in the field, though a couple require a hand lens.

We have five gilled mushrooms, two boletes, a truffle, a crust, two ascos and a cyphelloid fungus on our list. They have previously been found in summer, fall and winter and there’s a good chance that at least some of them are ready to show up now.

Find out more about the Hunt and the 12 rare species here and what to do if you think you found one of them.

We want to tip our hat to the FUNDIS Rare 20 Challenge for the Northeast which inspired ours. FUNDIS’ Rare 20 Challenge is part of a larger effort to generate observations in service of fungal conservation. At least one of the FUNDIS 20 – Boletus billiae – has been found in New York City, so do check out the FUNDIS Challenge too!