Ellen Trueblood (1911-1994) was a Boise-born journalist and environmentalist with a special interest in mycology--the study of mushrooms.  

Trueblood's work has often been overshadowed by that of her husband, the better-known environmentalist and outdoor journalist Ted Trueblood.  Still, Ellen Trueblood's work is worthy of admiration.  She wrote for such newspapers as the Caldwell News Tribune, the Boise Capital News, and the Nampa Free Press. 

Trueblood developed an interest in mushrooms during camping trips with her family in the early 1950s. She learned to identify edible mushrooms in Idaho's backcountry, and expanded her understanding of mushrooms through consulting with some of the top mycologists in the United States.  Boise State University's Albertsons Library, which houses Trueblood's personal papers, describes the significance of Trueblood's work:

In time Ellen Trueblood became an authority on Owhyee region mushrooms. Her fieldwork included grant-funded surveys of the Owyhee region, and she contributed articles to both amateur and professional journals.  One article, "Notes on Fungi of the Owyhee Region," summarizing two decades of her work, was published in 1975 in Studies on Higher Fungi, a festschrift in honor of Alexander H. Smith.  Ellen Trueblood identified more than twenty undiscovered species of fungi and assembled more than 6500 mushroom collections.  Two species,Hygrophorus ellenae and Rhizopogon ellenae, were named in her honor; a third, Leccinum truebloodii, discovered by her husband Ted, was named for him.  Ted and her children often accompanied her on her mushroom hunting expeditions, as did her grandchildren in later years.   In the 1970s she also cultivated fungi for Smith Kline & French Laboratories in Philadelphia, who were searching for potential sources of chemotherapeutic agents.