
When people think of areas of great mushroom diversity they usually think of lush, old-growth forests. They generally don’t think of the Big Apple or other large metropolitan areas which are considered more concrete jungle than thriving habitats. And yet, New York City is home to a remarkable diversity of fungi, just as it is for people.
The New York Mycological society has been focused on documenting New York’s fungal diversity since 2009. The club visits 17 New York City parks and greenspaces year-round (about 40 walks a year) and we track every single fungal species that we encounter.
This report is built from data in our database.
We analyze our observations by form group, seasonality, borough and park. We look at species that might be impacted by the changing macroclimate. We also give a little context on our club of dedicated community scientists.
We also have an iNaturalist project for New York City that complements this project. On iNat we don’t track every species on every walk, but we extensively document what’s notable.