Post-collecting processing began when operations were resumed after lunch at the Natural Resources Division laboratory at Haywood Community College. We are grateful to Dr. Douglas Staiger, Chairman, Natural Resources Division, for permission to use this laboratory. An immense moose head mounted in the laboratory watched over the dedicated volunteers, seven of whom still were at work at 11 p.m. Dr. Coleman McCleneghan and her student, Sean Westmoreland, put in long hours annotating materials including dark-spored agarics (e.g., Pholiota, Agrocybe, Stropharia, etc.). T. Rey had put in hours of preparatory effort that paid off. When necessary, she disappeared for a few minutes, soon to return with needed supplies. Sandy Sheine’s experience with organizing forays and recording collections helped take many rough edges off the process. Jerry Sheine did all the photography—to near exhaustion. Dr. Glenn Freeman and Susan Mitchell expedited matters by segregating a group of collections that could be preprocessed effectively without annotation. Glenn will scan this material to confirm presence of fertile fungi before forwarding it to identifiers where appropriate.
On Sunday, collections were removed from the dryers, correlated with collection cards, and packaged for future distribution to expert identifiers. Despite using temporary collection cards that had to be numbered by hand, only one case of conflicting numbering was encountered. Thirty minutes of brainstorming on improved processes concluded the work session. Several participants then headed over to Sugarlands to begin the work on the DLIA public relations effort.
A preliminary check in the area of the Sugarlands Visitor Center on Sunday afternoon, led by Laura Weishaupt, turned up many additional species; however, collecting restrictions limited us to samples of only five of them. One undescribed Amanita was collected; another was observed, but could not be collected.
On Monday, after a lengthy interview with The Mountain News of Sevier County, Tennessee, Rod Tulloss and Hank Mashburn manned the DLIA "Butterflies of the Soil" booth at the Sugarlands Visitor Center for about 6 hours.
An eight-year-old's view of the weekend (and some later events) is provided by Sarah Tulloss.
List of volunteers for weekend: Anathea Brooks, Pam Coleman, Whitey Hitchcock, Hank Mashburn, Dr. Coleman McCleneghan, Steve Peek, T. Rey, Jerry Sheine, Sandy Sheine, Mary Tulloss, Dr. Rod Tulloss, Sarah Tulloss, Laura Weishaupt, Sean Westmoreland, Pete Whelihan.
--- R. E. Tulloss