Oregon Mycological Society Fall Mushroom Show
Annual expert-staffed mushroom exhibit at the World Forestry Center — Pacific Northwest species identified and displayed, with vendors, cooking samples, and foraging guidance.
About the event
The Oregon Mycological Society Fall Mushroom Show is the OMS's flagship public event and one of the Pacific Northwest's most well-attended natural history exhibitions. Held each October at the World Forestry Center in Portland's Washington Park, the show presents a comprehensive display of Pacific Northwest wild mushroom species collected in the days preceding the event and arranged by expert OMS members for public viewing and education. The show has been a Portland institution for decades and is designed for general audiences as well as those with mycological background — the combination of visual display, expert interpretation, and hands-on identification service makes it accessible at multiple levels of engagement.
The Oregon Mycological Society, founded in 1948, is one of the Pacific Northwest's oldest continuously operating naturalist organizations. Its membership includes professional mycologists, university researchers, hobbyist foragers, and curious newcomers, and the annual show reflects this breadth. Expert members are stationed at the display tables throughout the day to discuss species identification, habitat associations, and practical foraging ethics. A separate identification table is staffed for visitors who bring their own found specimens for expert determination — a service the OMS has provided free of charge to the public for decades.
The World Forestry Center, the show's longtime venue, is a natural history museum dedicated to forests and forestry set in Washington Park adjacent to the Oregon Zoo. Its exhibit hall provides spacious, well-lit space for the mushroom display, and the building's forest-centered mission reinforces the ecological context of Pacific Northwest mycology. The show includes a vendor area with foraging books, mushroom art, specialty food products, and cultivation supplies, plus cooking demonstrations showing how to prepare the most common edible species of the season.
What to expect
The show runs for one day — the last Sunday of October — typically from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is charged at the door. The display is the centerpiece: tables arranged with 150 to 200 identified mushroom species covering the full diversity of Pacific Northwest fungi, from choice edibles to deadly toxics, all clearly labeled with identification notes and edibility status. The variety of forms — the delicate gills of an Amanita, the toothy undersurface of a hedgehog, the vivid orange lobster mushroom, the sculptural complexity of a cauliflower mushroom — is remarkable even to visitors with no mycological background.
The cooking demonstration area typically features OMS members preparing simple dishes using wild mushrooms: sautéed chanterelles, mushroom risotto, and hedgehog mushroom preparations. Samples are offered to visitors. The vendor area is compact but curated, with booksellers, art vendors, and specialty food producers. Bring any found specimens to the identification table in a paper bag with substrate and location notes — the queue can be long on peak attendance days, but the wait is worthwhile for a reliable expert determination.