Practical field guide and interesting read

books:


	• North American Mushrooms: A Field Guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi (Falconguide) Orson K. Miller, Hope Miller Falcon, 2006 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Practical field guide and interesting read

Reviewed by Juanita Watson for Reader Views (8/06)

"North American Mushrooms: A Field Guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi" is a comprehensive field guide that features most of the fungi one may encounter in the United States and Canada. This field guide is part of "A Falcon Guide" series and is a necessary asset to the library of any wild mushroom, or edible plant disciple.

"North American Mushrooms" is authored by the husband/wife team of mushroom enthusiasts. The Miller's have a long and extensive history in the world of fungi - they have worked all over North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia, and recently have carried out their field work in Biodiversity studies in the Greater Antilles and Belize. Orson is a Professor Emeritus of Botany and curator of Fungi from Virginia Tech, and is one of the leading mycologists in the United States. His wife, Hope, has authored a wild mushroom cookbook, taught classes, and supports Orson's work in the field. Basically, these people live and breathe mushrooms.

This comprehensive book has beautiful pictures, easy to understand keys, detailed drawings, interesting fungi information, listings of toxins, and useful information on habitat. This is not only a practical field guide but an interesting read into the world of wild mushrooms. In the wide range of selections available in the genre of field guides, I would recommend "North American Mushrooms" along with a couple area specific resources to round out a definitive package.

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Good

This is a good book on identifying common mushrooms but please be aware that you cannot learn to truly do this without learning from an expert--either someone who has extensive field training under an expert or is an accomplished academic in the area themselves. My training came from the late great, amateur mycologist, Herb Saylor, and also the eminent professor, Dr. Harry Thiers. I took all of Dr. Thiers's mycology classes back in the early 80s before he retired, and it was an honor and a priviledge to study under him (although I was a psychobiology major, I wanted to learn something about botany and mycology). I have many good general mycology field guides in my library but none are a substitute for an experienced expert. That having been said, Miller covers many of the important species in this book, although for brevity's sake many less common species were omitted. All in all a decent field guide if you remember never to eat anything you are not absolutely sure of. Remember, "When in doubt, throw it out."

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Very useful in its own rite

Overall, this book is great for the beginner. It includes great color photographs of every mushroom covered. Though it contains only 180 species of mushrooms across North America, it is still a great field guide for the beginner. The book also contains a very easy and clear-cut method for classifying the mushrooms that you found. It is definitely good classification and identification practice for the beginner. Overall, it is a good field guide with nice color pictures.

Very Worthwhile Mushroom Guide

We are amateurs who like to take pictures and identify as many MR/fungi as we can. We own several other guides. This one is very good, and well worth adding to your reference collection. Many excellent color photos. Good Index and Identification Key. This book also has something no other guide has: a "guaranteed binding". I wish they all were like this, because most of our other MR and Wildflower guides have pages falling out of them after a year or more use. Really good value for the price as well.

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