Greg Mueller is the Negaunee Foundation Vice President of Science at the Chicago Botanic Garden, is on the faculty of the biology department at Northwestern University, and is a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History.

After first considering life as a musician, Greg Mueller’s professional aspirations took a surprising turn when a college class introduced him to mushrooms in the forests of southern Illinois. He switched his interests from composers to decomposers, from Mozart to mushrooms. Thereafter, he became a biologist who specializes in fungi.

. “A hundred thousand species of fungi are named and well-described,” Greg says. “But estimates are that there are a million to one point five million fungi species. Which means we know only five to ten percent of what’s out there.” Today, Greg is a practitioner of both mycology and management. He continues his scientific research while also leading the department of science and conservation at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

            If you aren’t interested in eating mushrooms, just looking at them, you’ll be fine with buying a mushroom field guide and heading out into the woods on your own. But if you’re planning on eating mushrooms, find your local mushroom club and start going to meetings. You’ll learn best by consulting knowledgable people—and as an added bonus, the gatherings are a lot of fun.

            To aid your efforts, you might want to acquire a copy of Greg Mueller’s book, Edible Wild Mushrooms either at the Chicago Botanic Garden’s gift shop, the local book store of your choice, or on Amazon. You can learn more about Greg’s work on his website and can contribute to the Chicago Botanic Garden’s scientific and conservation work by calling up the development office at (847) 835-6838.

            Together with Patrick Leacock from the Field Museum of Natural History, Greg recently discovered a new species of mushroom living in the third largest city in America. Along with Shape of the World host Jill Riddell, who volunteered for the project, they published the findings in 2016. This website on the Chicago chanterelle tells the full story.

The discovery of this new species of mushroom demonstrates the potential of cities for protecting biodiversity. Wild things live around us and among us.

Photo by Alice Q. Hargrave