Roger Phillips:
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Sterry & Hughes:
& Toadstools
Paul Sterry & Barry Hughes, HarperCollins, 2009 Sterry and Hughes have contributed the book on fungi to Collins' fine series of handbooks on natural history. Given the amount of work involved, it seems a bit hard that their names are not even on the front cover. The book is just about pocketable if you have a coat like a Barbour with big pockets, though it is a pretty chunky addition if those pockets already contain a penknife, hand-lens, camera, notebook and pencil as they will need to for a fungal foray.
The text and plates are arranged as a traditional field-guide - though with photographs taken in the field in place of paintings. The text is clear, crisp, and helpful for field characters, so you know to scratch your Agaricus to tell whether it is a field mushroom or a stomach-upsetting Yellow Stainer. Long latinate words have mainly been avoided in favour of terms like "convex", "covered in patches...", "ring". It feels as if very little has been lost in this process, as far as the amateur naturalist is concerned. Attributes listed, after a general description, are cap, gills, stipe (i.e. stem, an odd lapse into technobabble), habitat, and status. Oddly, there is no mention of edibility, though a casual mention is sometimes made when a species is especially poisonous (this is mentioned for the genus Amanita but not specifically for the Fly Agaric). To make fungi more approachable, the book contains English names for nearly all the species listed. Naturalists will be familiar with Fly Agaric and The Blusher, Panther Cap and Destroying Angel, but "Jewelled Amanita" (A. gemmata) and "Grey Spotted Amanita" (A. excelsa var spissa) do have an invented feel to them. For the beginner, there is quite an attractive section on fungal biology (like a website or a Dorling Kindersley book), an introduction to identification, and a rather latinate glossary relieved by a reasonable number of labelled photographs. Then there is an excellent 3-page set of illustrations of cap shapes, cap textures, gill attachments, gill arrangements, stipe (stem) features and rings. The front matter ends with a very good 7-page index to the main genera, with short texts and a couple of small photographs of each group. There are further delightful surprises at the back of the book, too. There are short sections on several of the smaller and less conspicuous groups, including Woodwarts (Xylariaceae), plant disease fungi such as Rusts and Smuts, and Slime moulds (quite beautiful). It is remarkable that Sterry & Hughes cover so many Ascomycetes as many larger books hardly mention them - they include the delicious Morels as well as many brightly coloured but tiny discs and cups. There are several interesting ecological groupings, including Sand-dune fungi, Woodchip fungi, Dung fungi, Burnt-ground (phoenicoid) fungi, Lichens, and then fungi of Oak, Beech, Birch, Hazel/Ash, Willow, Conifer, Bog and Grassland. These are wonderfully helpful, and it is just a pity they are only one or two pages each. The index is thorough and invaluable, though Sulphur Tuft is indexed as Tuft, Sulphur which really doesn't seem quite right - a hyphen would have been a better choice for the pedantic. It is possible to identify a range of fungi to genus at least with this book in the field, I tried it. The best place to start is with the fine 7-page "guide" (not exactly a Key) to the Main Fungal Genera and Groups at the front of the book: you just look through the 30-odd pictures-and-descriptions and you often get straight through to the right answer, e.g. Collybia, the Toughshanks. Since there are no images of sections (vertical or horizontal), you have to study the textual descriptions of gills and so on carefully, which does take a few minutes. This book is substantially bigger and heavier than a traditional Collins field-guide (762 grams, compared to 584 grams, i.e. 30% heavier, I just weighed them). Still, it is small enough to carry, essential if you need to identify in the field, and it is genuinely helpful. |
Michael Jordan:
Michael Jordan, Frances Lincoln, 2nd Edition 2004 Jordan's enormous book is the product of 30 years spent studying and collecting fungi. Jordan is a botanist, heads up an association of fungus groups, and ran the Mushroom Magic TV series on Channel 4. The Encyclopedia of Fungi is far too large to take into the field, so you have to decide whether to make notes, to take photographs, or to collect specimens to bring back to the book. Jordan hesitates to give us English names; they are displayed only for species with well-established names, in small type below the Latin name of the species' family. The fungi are arranged in systematic order, with full taxonomic details: e.g. Agaricomycetidae, Agaricales, Pluteaceae left, centre and right of the page header; but there are no English names of groups. A double-page spread takes up 42 x 27 centimetres of your desk, and displays an impressive 6 species - often of the same genus - at once. The descriptions are precise and not too densely technical. Attributes listed are dimensions, cap, gills, spores, stem, odour, taste, chemical tests and occurrence. Edibility is noted with a brief description and a symbol. Every species is illustrated with just a single colour photograph taken in the field - a bold decision. Specimens are mostly mature, upright and whole, though often as well one specimen has been uprooted and laid down so its bulb (volva) and gills can be seen. This has the advantage that you see the species in its habitat, and the serious disadvantage that there are no cut sections to show how the gills are attached, nor the curvature of the cap. You also don't get to see the cap from directly overhead, whereas you often do in Phillips. The photos are not tightly cropped, either, so the mushrooms are often quite a small part of the image. Identifying down to species is therefore not easy with this book. If you have a microscope you may find the details of asci and spores helpful - complete with dimensions in micrometres - but in that case you would probably want a drawing of the spores anyway. It seems an uneasy balance of technicality and popularity. For the beginner wanting to get into Fungi, Jordan offers some unique and interesting features. There is a neat page on "Systematics" (a classification of fungi). There is an excellent page of diagrams of fungal structure including structure of typical mushrooms, Helvellas, Discomycetes and Pyrenomycetes. There is a very helpful page of Shapes of Basidiomycete Fungi (i.e. mushrooms with stems and caps) - this replaces the traditional hopelessly confusing appendix full of latinate words, so Jordan is a great improvement. And there is even a beautiful page defining visually the astonishing range of 84 colours used to describe fungi in the book. There is a compact Key (down to Genus level) taking up just over 3 pages, but without illustrations. All of this adds up to a clear, concise, but still somewhat daunting route, not really enough to prevent the reader from simply but somewhat despairingly flipping slowly through the pages in search of a match. Jordan is a useful book to have for several reasons - it contains information not in many other books; it has good field photographs; it covers species often not covered elsewhere. However, as it is neither a pocketable field guide nor a sufficient desk guide on its own, I would not recommend it as your first or only book on fungi. |
Grünert & Grünert:
Field Guide to
of Britain and Europe
Helmut & Renate Grünert, Crowood, 1991 The Grünerts' is the only one of these guides that is easily pocketable. At just under 300 pages it is still quite detailed for a field guide, but with the generous treatment of only 2 species per double-page spread - half a page of text, a half-page photograph - it covers just 265 of the most common or striking species. Obviously this forces a strict selection of what to cover on to the authors. There is very brief coverage of the cups and brackets. The other Ascomycetes like Candlesnuff, Woodwarts and crusts, and the smaller fungi like rusts, slime moulds and lichens are omitted altogether. Also missing is any kind of key or guide to the genera, though there are ten coloured symbols (see the Fly Agaric illustration) which neatly distinguish Boletes, Brackets, Puffballs and so on from the "gill fungi". The colours make for quick access to the smaller groups, but fail to address the main problem - that the gill fungi occupy pages 16-179 of the book, with only flipping through the pictures to guide the beginner. Do not be put off by this book's age - its photographs are clear and remarkably large (in fact, the mushrooms are often as big or bigger than in the much heavier Phillips). All the photographs are taken (in the modern way) in nature. In a few cases, a section is shown; in most species, the mushroom is photographed from the side to show cap, gills and stem; and quite often, a specimen or two is laid flat beside the standing mushrooms. The photographs have excellent depth of focus, and are very helpful in showing the essential features for identification. The text is as good as the illustrations. Each species is described under the headings of cap, gills, stem, and flesh. The colour of the spore print is indicated for every species. The distribution across Europe is described; it seems that Dr Derek Reid has adapted the text and many of the distribution notes for British readers. There are very helpful sections on Possible confusion and Edibility for every species. Surprisingly for a small field guide, there are quite extensive Notes on each species, giving the meaning of the Latin name, and other interesting facts such as use as dyestuffs, special biological mechanisms, cultivation, history and recognition of the genus. The Grünerts are practical, as well, in rejecting the easy path of listing all sorts of identification marks (spore sizes, chemical reagents) that normal "collectors" cannot be expected to use. This keeps the text short, and frankly avoids the clutter found in many mushroom books. Where the Grünerts excel is in describing edibility, and avoiding possible confusion with poisonous species. Each species has an icon to indicate its culinary status: a fork-on-a-plate icon - straight, or crossed out; or a skull-and-crossbones for the dangerous species. This is a good and practical book, in other words, for the mushroom collector, and the publisher has found space for four pages on collecting, including one page on avoiding poisoning. This is a useful and reliable book to carry with you in the field (by the way, it weighs just 414 grams, about half a Sterry & Hughes), whether your purpose is collecting for the kitchen or simply identifying what you see, as long as your focus is on mushrooms rather than fungi in general. A small book cannot cover every species; this one does really well in its selection, and takes care to tell you when there are similar species in a group, or in other groups that look similar. You could rely on this book as an eating guide, but remember the old advice: get your wild mushrooms checked by an expert before you eat them. Or get another book such as Phillips to confirm your identifications once you get home. |
