Guest Author - Diana Pederson

Mushrooms of Northeast North America. George Barron. Lone Pine Publishing. 1999.

Mushrooms have fascinated me since I was a child, smashing the “puffballs” found in an empty field near my home. During those preteen years, I didn’t know that the “mushroom” I saw was really nothing more than the fruiting body of a fungus plant. Most of the plant was no doubt underground!

If you are fascinated with mushrooms, this book is absolutely essential for you. The different species are first grouped into non-gill and gilled fungi. The non-gilled fungi include slime molds, sac fungi, puffballs, jelly fungi, coral fungi, tooth fungi, bracket fungi, and boletes. The gilled fungi are broken into the pink-spored, dark-spored, brown-spored, and light-spored groups. Identification keys accompany each of the gilled-fungi groups.

This book fascinates me. I hadn’t realized just how colorful fungi can be. Of course, you have to be very careful handling them if you can’t properly identify the plant since many are poisonous to both animals and humans. Next time you find a “mushroom” growing in your garden, pull out this book and see if you can at least determine which group it belongs to. It just might be the start of a new hobby for you.

Recommendation

This is another field guide you’ll want to add to your gardening bookshelves. Alternatively, you may want them in your car for identifying plants at your favorite campground, park, or wood lot. It’s always easier to have full colored pictures to look at than it is to id plants from just written descriptions. These guides are among the most colorful available today.