Christian Schwarz

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Christian Schwarz is a mushroom enthusiast and taxonomist and citizen science advocate from Santa Cruz, the land of milk (caps) and honey (mushrooms). He studied at UCSC, and now spends his time photographing, teaching about, and making scientific collections of macrofungi. He is coauthor of "Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast", and is slowly building a mycoflora for Santa Cruz County.  He also writes a blog called Notes of a Mycophile.


Fungi satisfy his curiosity with their seemingly endless forms (from the grotesque to the bizarre to the sublime). He has travelled in search of fungi throughout the United States, as well as central America, Indonesia, Borneo, and Europe. Besides mushroom taxonomy and mycofloristics, he’s an excitable birder and passionate about citizen science, particularly the use of iNaturalist and similar tools.

At the SCMF Wild Mushroom Foray, he'll be giving a talk called Sex, Death, and Alternative Lifestyles in the Kingdom Fungi