Parasol Mushrooms by Else Vellinga

Else Vellinga is a mycologist whose professional life focuses on taxonomy and systematics of mushrooms, first in the Netherlands, where she got her professional training, and her PhD at the university in Leiden, and from 1998 onwards in California, USA. She is co-editor and contributor of the Dutch identification work, Flora agaricina neerlandica, and co-author of an atlas on the distribution and ecology of Dutch mushroom species. She considers her taxonomic work the basis for further studies, and very important, for conservation. She has been active in efforts to propose species for the IUCN red data list and is active in the Fungal Diversity Surveys conservation group, working on conservation issues in western North America. She has described a number of species as new to science, not only parasol mushrooms, but also Helvellas and recently eastern North American Albomagister species.
Else is an avid knitter and likes to use mushroom dyed yarns for her creations.
In short she can be described as a cat-loving, Dutch, knitting mycologist living in Berkeley, CA.