August 17, 2024

Some Mushroom Guides Are Good — and Some Might Kill You

Two reliable guidebooks — and some elderly Shaggy Parasols



A post on X-formerly-Twitter two days ago linked to another post on Reddit that claimed,

My entire family was in hospital last week after accidentally consuming poisonous mushrooms.

My wife purchased a book from a major online retailer for my birthday. The book is entitled something similar to "Mushrooms UK: A Guide to Harvesting Safe and Edible Mushrooms."

I don't know if this incident is true or not, but ones like it have been predicted. A year ago there was a rush of articles about mushroom field guides. created by artificial intelligence networks (chatbots) that are for sale on Amazon ("makor online retailer"?) and other places.

Other AI-written books are flooding in too, some bearing the names of real authors. Amazon claims to be dealing with this issue, but don't hold your breath.

Meanwhile, if you want good Southern Rockies mushroom guides, there are some written by real people who know their fungi.

PPMS president James Chelin
talking mushrooms in the field.
For years, Vera Stucky Evenson's Mushrooms of Colorado and the Southern Rocky Mountains was my guide. That 1997 edition is now out of print, and used copies on Amazon go for more than $100.

A revised version, Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountain Region, is more reasonably priced.

Local is always best, and now I supplement "Saint Vera" with Foraging Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountains, written by several people within the Colorado Mycological Society and the Pikes Peak Mycological Society.

 It is is not as broad, because it focuses on (a) edible wild mushrooms and (b) look-alikes that might not be so edible. Plus it includes some recipes, including one for hawk's wing pickles that I have already tried. 

It's the go-to field guide right now, as far as I am concerned, if edible mushrooms are the goal. Maybe I will have to go for Evenson's second book eventually. After all, she has an underground laboratory at the Denver Botanic Gardens — how perfect is that?

 

1 comment:

  1. The first lecture from my pathology prof was an account of a family of seven, five of whom died after eating a wild mushroom stew containing one of the deadly Amanita species. I've never forgotten that lesson about gathering wild mushrooms.

    ReplyDelete

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