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Originally Posted by solus  I collected my copy from WH Smith's yesterday - ordered online Tuesday, £10.87 delivered free to my local store. 
I disagree with the above criticism re: edibility - there are plenty of other books on the market specifically dealing with edible fungi and this one is intended as a general field guide - explained well in the box entitiled "Edibility" at the bottom of page 5. It does mention those species regarded as good eating as well as those which are poisonous in the text which is good enough for me as I have no plans to eat anything I find anyway! |
The thing is though, probably the majority of the target audience are interested in mushrooms as 'free food'. So if you're out for a walk, spot a mushroom on a tree, identify it as Jew's Ear from your guide, but do not realise that it is in edible, you're not going to be gathering any.
The very brief 'edibility' section mentions only 5 species. The section on 'boletes' starts by saying that there are several excellent edibles, but then doesn't list any of them other than the edulis and badius. For example, the entry for boletus reticulatus, named as 'summer bolete', says it is similar to the cep, but doesn't mention whether it is edible or not.
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Gill photos would have been helpful but that would have made the book twice the size and no doubt more than twice the price and the gills/pores are described in the text so in combination with another guide (Jordan, for instance) I think I might be able to manage...
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Jordan and Phillips are both the same price and provide much more. What you are paying for is a compact guide. Much information has been omitted, and not to reduce the price, but to reduce the size.
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This is going to show up my ignorance of the subject good and proper but...
do I detect a couple of tiny red bruises on the cap of the amanita Mr Anonymous refers to in his post above?
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I assume he means that without showing a bruised/cut stem, you won't 'get' what the most important feature of Rubescens is (and therefore how to distinguish it from the excelsa var. spissa. OTOH he could mean that the grey-spotted photo is actually a Rubescens as well. Either way, there is a general issue that where species can be confused, little/no effort has been made to select photos that exemplify key identifying features. I think this is why Beamish's comments arise - this book has been designed, and I've seen it before in other books, to look pretty first and foremost, and therefore the concerns of the mycologist are very much an afterthought.