Synopses & Reviews
Mushrooms are among the most intriguing and striking inhabitants of the natural world, as highly regarded for their distinctive flavors and uses in cooking and medicine as for their sometimes strange, often beautiful shapes and forms. Some are medicinal, others poisonous or even lethal.
Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the World is a well-rounded look at mushrooms, including their cultivation, ethnobotanical uses, and the fascinating roles they play in nature. The authors provide expert advice on how to identify and distinguish between edible and poisonous wild mushrooms and how to record important details, with suggestions for taking photographs and preparing spore prints. More than 250 stunning photographs accompany the text. Truly international in its coverage, this engaging introduction to the world of mushrooms will appeal to naturalists, students, photographers, chefs, hikers, and potential growers from around the world.
Review
"Outstanding tips on how to cultivate the top eight species grown and eaten worldwide. Beautifully illustrated with outstanding photographs, certainly the best this reviewer has ever seen."—J. Dawson, Choice, February 2004 J. Dawson
Review
"The authors, both biologists and mycologists, present clear scientific information. An A–Z listing gives descriptions, a few facts about each mushroom, cautionary rules, and tips on cooking, when appropriate."—Kathi Keville, American Herb Association Quarterly Newsletter, Winter 2006 Choice
Review
"This is an ambitious undertaking ... and the result is a highly informative and useful text that doubles as a field guide. This book is sure to become an essential resource for mushroom aficionados and mycology professionals."—Northeastern Naturalist, December 2005
Synopsis
A well-rounded look at mushrooms, including their cultivation, ethnobotanical uses, and the fascinating roles they play in nature. Included is expert advice on how to identify and distinguish between edible and harmful wild mushrooms.
About the Author
Ian R. Hall has traveled widely and his knowledge of mushroom cultivation is international in scope. His firm, Truffles and Mushrooms Consulting Ltd., aims to further the cultivation of edible ectomycorrhizal mushrooms. He also directs the activities of Symbiotic Systems N.Z. Ltd, a company that studies the beneficial effects of mycorrhizas in forestry. Hall has published on a variety of topics in addition to edible mushrooms and mycorrhizas, including the pathology of grasses oversown into tussock grasslands and greenhouse design. He completed his PhD at New Zealand's Otago University, where he studied with Geoff Baylis. After his post-doctoral fellowship with Jim Gerdemann at Illinois University, Hall returned to New Zealand to work as an applied mycologist and plant pathologist with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF Technology).Steven L. Stephenson is a research professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he served as director of a worldwide project funded by the National Science Foundation to document the distribution of all the slime molds and their relatives. Prior to this he taught biology at Fairmont State University in West Virginia for nearly three decades. Dr. Stephenson has studied fungi and slime molds on six continents in climates ranging from the tropics to the polar regions of both the Arctic and Subantarctic. He is author/co-author of numerous publications, including Myxomycetes: A Handbook of Slime Molds (Timber Press, 1994) and Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the World (Timber Press, 2003).