Edible Mushrooms: A Forager’s Guide to the Wild Fungi of Britain and Europe

929 Pages·2016·65.6 MB·English

by  Geoff Dann

Edible Mushrooms

Horn of Plenty.
Edible Mushrooms
A forager’s guide to the wild fungi
of Britain, Ireland and Europe
Geoff Dann
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Fungi and foraging
1. What are fungi?
2. How to identify fungi
3. Where and when to find fungi
4. Safety and equipment
5. Culture and laws
6. Poisonous fungi
7. Edible fungi
Part II: The fungi
How to use this guide
Visual index
Species guide
Glossary
References
Resources
Index
Photograph credits
About the author
I was fortunate to have grown up roaming the woods and old grassland on the
ridge of the North Downs in Surrey, south-east England, and my interest in the
wild things around me goes back to about the time I learned to walk. My love of
fungi in particular started with a search for the hallucinogenic variety in my late
teens (in the mid-1980s). It became apparent that while my intended quarry was
not so easy to find, a dazzling variety of other fungi were available, some of
which had to be edible. And so I began using the first edition of Mushrooms by
Roger Phillips to learn how to identify what I was finding. There was no internet
to help me, nobody to teach me and no other books even half as good. It took
plenty of time, and plenty of caution. Fungi foraging remained my hobby and
passion for the next 20 years, while my day job was software engineering, a
career I left in 2005 to study philosophy and cognitive science at Sussex
University.
In 2008, with my studies over and time on my hands, I set myself a personal
challenge of scouring the extensive woodlands of Sussex for every edible and
toxic species of fungi that I should have found/identified, but hadn’t. This wasn’t
intended as a career move any more than the philosophy degree, but my
knowledge and passion for the subject was noticed by the owner of a recently
created fungi foraging website, and he offered to promote my services as a
foraging guide in return for writing articles for his website. Lacking any other
job, it seemed silly to say no.
One thing then led to another and, without any real effort on my part to
develop my new career in any particular direction, each autumn I found myself
working full-time teaching people about edible and poisonous fungi. In 2011 I
started collecting photos with a vague plan to one day write a book about fungi
foraging. Five years later, it has become a reality.
To Cathy
Acknowledgements
My first debt of gratitude is to the numerous people who have helped me via the
Fungus Conservation Trust (formerly the Association of British Fungus Groups),
especially Michael Jordan, without whom the FCT would not exist. Others who
have kindly taken the time to identify fungi I couldn’t are Roy Betts, Leif
Goodwin, Roy Miller, Andreas Gminder, Chris Johnson, Mal Greaves and Pavel
Nedelev.
Of course I am also indebted to the combined work of generations of
mycologists, but especially to Roger Phillips, whose 1981 book Mushrooms
made it possible for me to start learning about fungi foraging in my teens.
Thanks also to Nigel Frith and Kerry Reynolds for encouraging me to start
teaching people about edible wild fungi.
I’d like to thank Kerry, and also Neil Woolley, for providing feedback on
early drafts, Mavis Addis for the Ganoderma artwork and Liz Holden for
assistance with new English common names, and Melissa Waddingham for
taking me truffle hunting.
For the use of their photos I’d like to thank Ian Bastone, Justin Long, Herbert
Baker, Dr Holger Krisp, Gerhard Koller, Sava Krstic, Andreas Kunze, Jerzy
Opiola, Ron Pastorino, Ryane Snow and Walt Sturgeon.
I am grateful to the following for their invaluable contributions:
Distribution data: Data courtesy of the NBN Gateway with thanks to all the
data contributors. (The NBN and its data contributors bear no responsibility for
the further analysis or interpretation of this material, data and/or information.)
Data also courtesy of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and all its data
contributors.
Species descriptions: With thanks to Roger Phillips, Stefan Buczacki,
Michael Jordan, Paul Sterry and Barry Hughes, whose works were used as
reference guides when composing and checking the species descriptions.
Cooking tips: With thanks to Elisabeth Luard, Roger Phillips, Amy Farges,