In this presentation Aaron Hilliard will give a look into the past at the first people interested in mushrooms, the birth of taxonomy and the early botanists leading up to today's technology for classifying fungal organisms. It's a fun talk for mycophiles of all experience levels, bridging the past with the present and including many of our current day beloved mushrooms.

This is a North American Mycological Association (NAMA) Webinar

RImycoS membership grants you an affiliated club discount on NAMA membership.

These lectures are Free for NAMA members or $5 for nonmembers.

Register here https://app.glueup.com/event/the-history-of-mycology-and-taxonomy-165895/

Aaron Hilliard is an amateur mycologist and mycology educator from Port Orchard Washington. He is a father and active outdoorsman. His love for fungi started young when his grandma introduced him to wild mushroom foraging. After spending 20 years in the forest hunting for edible mushrooms and scouring the local libraries for mycological literature (before the internet), he went on to join the Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society where he quickly got into service and became a trustee on the board. He went on to become the Vice President and program director and has held that position for the past 3 years.


Aaron attended Olympic College in Bremerton in 2001-2003 pursuing a degree in video production and integrated multimedia. In 2020 his passion for video making and mushroom foraging came together when he started a YouTube channel called Mushroom Wonderland. The channel has grown in popularity in the Pacific Northwest region and beyond, recently passing the 70,000-subscriber mark. He has had many well-known mycologists make cameo appearances and he releases weekly mushroom related videos. He has given various presentations for many clubs and at fungi festivals, led forays into the forest, and will be teaching a mycology course at Olympic College in the summer quarter. He remains current in the scene, with a deep interest in mushroom taxonomy, microscopy, foraging, and basically all things mushrooms.