The New Savory Wild Mushroom

Suzanne Visser is a professional associate at the Kananaskis Centre for
Environmental Research, University of Calgary.

This field guide is based on mushrooms found primarily in the Pacific
Northwest, but it has a much wider application in that most of the
mushrooms are also common in Canada. The book is aimed at the amateur
mushroom hunter whose interests lie primarily in recognizing edible wild
mushrooms confidently and with speed so he can proceed promptly with
consuming his finds.

Through the use of outstanding color photographs (probably the best of
any mushroom field guide in North America) and nontechnical descriptions
of approximately 200 common mushrooms found in forests and meadows, this
book strives to make the identification of edible and poisonous
mushrooms as painless as possible. The “picture book” photographs,
taken in natural settings, are valuable in that they provide clues on
the type of habitat in which to hunt for specific mushrooms.

Keys for identifying mushrooms as members of particular species are not
used to avoid intimidating the novice mycologist; rather, the mushrooms
are divided into broad groups based on their morphology (i.e., boletes,
chanterelles, gilled mushrooms, polypores, spine fungi, coral fungi,
jelly fungi, puffballs/earthstars/false truffles, cup
fungi/helvellas/morels/false morels), with the attributes of each group
conveniently summarized at the beginning of each major group. Each
section is easily located by consulting the bottom of the page. The
gilled mushrooms are further categorized by spore color; however, these
categories are not as clearly delimited as, and are more difficult to
locate than, the major groups. Common names are given priority,
presumably because many novices have difficulty with Latin names;
however, it should be stressed that for most mushrooms there is no
standard system of common names, so these names may vary among different
mushroom manuals. Also, common names can lead to confusion, as with the
pig’s ear (Discina perlata) and pig’s ear gomphus (Gomphus
clavatus).

A brief introduction provides background on mushrooms in general
(ecological roles, life cycle, growth habits, main groups, collection
procedures) and there is an excellent discussion of mushroom poisons—a
subject of extreme interest to many mushroom pickers—located at the
end of the book, along with an entertaining and informative chapter on
mushroom preparation, cooking, and storage procedures. The format is
easy to follow, with photographs and descriptions occurring together,
often on the same page. The number of mushrooms described is not too
overwhelming and allows for a compact field guide. Rulers to permit
measurement of mushrooms in inches or centimetres are printed at the
beginning of the book, although I suspect these may be difficult to use,
particularly if one wants to avoid soiling the book. However, since all
measurements are given in inches, these rulers may be useful for
converting to the metric system in Canada.

This guide is highly recommended for those who have little experience
with wild mushrooms and want to begin collecting for the table.