Good Shroom Book

[smogs]

Been thinking about buying a mushroom book for a while now

can anyone recomend a good book with species common to australia with some sort of ID chart?

prefrably one thats easy to find at a big book shop

cheers

[mazatec_luv]

Psilocybin mushrooms of the world

by Paul stamets

very good book includes austrlian varieties but has heaps of mushys in it. score out of 10

9/10

[Rev]

Thats a good book but a bit specialised

No i cant reccomend any

I am continually disappointed in the mycology books i find here. To get even a rough idea you practically have to own ALL of them and even then the whole ID field guide thing is woeful

better than anything ive seen here is David aroras 'mushrooms demystified'

we seem to share a lot of species with western nth america, and if not species then the keys are very useful for sorting through to genus level

available at amazon

or better still go via this link

http://www.shroomery.org/books/

and the shroomery gets some $ as commission at not extra cost to you

Mushrooms Demystified : A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi

by David Arora

1986-10-01

Nothing is more elusive and mysterious than the wild mushroom. David Arora celebrates the gathering and study of wild mushrooms with engaging style, wit and simple terminology. Mushrooms Demystified includes descriptions, photographs, and keys to over 2,000 species. There is a Beginner's Checklist of the 70 most distinctive and common mushrooms plus detailed chapters on terminology, classification, habitats, mushroom cookery, mushroom toxins, and the meanings of scientific mushroom names. A must have!

List Price: $39.95

Our Price: $27.17

[strangebrew]

There is one called "A Field companion to Australian Fungi" by Bruce Fuhrer. But if it's the one I think it is, I wasn't that rapt in it when browsing in a book-shop one day.

[smogs]

yeah ive had a bit of trouble

i have a great book about fungi of the world but the id is shocking

infact i cosidered just tearing it out

its absolutely no help

i looked through a european fungi pocket book the other day and was thinking we might share alot of simular ones being brough over by all the immigrants and what not

and yes i want a much broader book than just psilocybes...

still waiting for a solid rain in sydney!! i cant remember the last time it rained... would have been months ago

it has drizzled lightly but no proper rain!

i have heard that lane cove national park is excelent for fungi... CSIRO double helix had some talk and hunt or something a few years ago that my mum organised and only found out recently (was years ago)

cheers for the recomendation ill take a squiz

[Rev]

strangebrew:

There is one called "A Field companion to Australian Fungi" by Bruce Fuhrer. But if it's the one I think it is, I wasn't that rapt in it when browsing in a book-shop one day.

yeah nice pictures but NO substance

theres a few of those

and then theres the opposite

and theres the few with neither substance nor aesthetics

[JumpedAngel]

I'm no expert on fungi, and what little I read came from many years ago and I can't even give you the source, but the way that I learned it was that fungal spores can live in the same realms as aerobactors ie. in the air (at least quite often), high altitude atmospheric research has shown that many fungal spore types can be found high in the atmosphere and hence they span the earth or at least make regular intercontinental travel.

If you can accept the above then it is not the europeans who brought the spores in (at least not neccessarily), the theory goes that if u create the right micro climate then eventually a spore of the appropriate fungus will fall there and grow. For example, I didn't have to plant the fly in the front yard just the pine tree that it lives on. Looking at fungus in this way can help you to understand global distributions.

Being a bush survival freak, I have been wanting to review a few of the ABRS's. but havn't had the chance to take a look yet, has anyone here had a look at them yet? and if so, what is your verdict? (I too have been using the Oz field companion named above)

http://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/index.html

[RonnySimulacrum]

reville hit the nail on the head, there is no definitive book, or even close to in this field. A lot of this has to do with the fact that there is still a lot of disagreement between people on lots of scientific and mycological data, so a ‘true story’ to put it bluntly can not be constructed.

The best thing to do is go to your local library and use lots of bits out of all there books on fungi to try and construct your own jigsaw puzzle of the world of fungi.

Then go to the book shop and by 2 or so books that play into your understanding, you may save yourself a lot of money this way too.

"A Field companion to Australian Fungi" by Bruce Fuhrer, is a good pic book as has been pointed out but not that good for info, what the hell do you expect, Bruce is a photographer not a mycologist.

“Psilocybin mushrooms of the world” by Paul Stamets, is a very good book but when it comes to oz you have to know your mycology or you may end up being very confused.

For poisoning see, “Toxic and hallucinogenic mushroom poisoning”, by Gary Lincoff, old but still good.

“mushrooms demystified” David Aroras as Reville points out is probably your best in-betweener. Older looking pics but very good info.

Just my to cents

[Guest electro]

well, with their being no definitive book, i propose a capatilist idea ! lol

why dont the myco peeeps of this community get together & get something into production... why not make money from something you love and help peeps out at the same time ... *looking generally in the direction of rev, bm & other such peeps*

*shrug* just an idea

[RonnySimulacrum]

Well me and Ben could provide some pics for the book, eg,

And I am sure we could take lots of all sorts for the project.

And you know if well all put our heads together we may get somewhere.

[strangebrew]

Yeah, nice pics. I love the tall sub. But Ferret's Amanita would still get my vote.

It's a doozy. :D

[smogs]

damn nice pics

and yes writing a book would make u feel great... but the process is long and shitty

you dont write specialised books for the money

thanks for the info

soon as i get together some money i might lash out and buy a few

and finally rain in sydney!!

time for my first proper hunt

any starting sugestions besides not eating what i dont know? (i wasnt planing on eating any just looking and perhaps poking a few)

[Rev]

Smogs is right

Books cost a lot of money to make and distribute and you have to sell a lot to recoup your work and expenditure

Why not join the informaton age and go DVD - sure you cant take it with you in the filed but its hard to take a heavy tome too - besides laptop technology is going ahead nicely

Essentially the the problem i see is not the pictures - as the contributions here point out

but rather the content

Mushrooms sure are beaustiful but the most photogenic mushroom is not necessarily the most representative and useful for ID.

Its like a scientific diagram and a sketch - not at all the same and the latter has plenty of aesthetic appeal but very little scientific merit

Keys also are the 'key' to the books success and need consensus between mycologists (ha!) on how to approach ID from several angles and arrive at the same point.

Suggested keys might start off by habitat, spore colour (please!!) or any other really obvious but constant charactereistic that the layman can identify

This is the core of the book and needs the most work, followed by the writing - needs to be well written or its just dead or worse. Lastly come the pics which there are no end of.

Glossy pics are expensive too and there is a limit to the number - a digital format alleviates this

In conjuction with a digital format for the main body you could publish the keys separately in hardcover for greater accessibility and because hardcover is often more pleasant to work with (tangible)

[psylogic]

I like revs idea of a dvd or cd as all the static coontent would proable fit on a business card cd. If we went a step further and added some video to replace some of the identification pics ie "here is a ps cubesis make note it's identifiy features and if we look underneath etc etc". Even with with this content we would still be pushing 50 Mb. additionally you could add detailed yet easy to understand cultivation teks (they don't have to have anything incriminating in them , just to provide an easily understood concept).

All of this content could be updated and maintained similar to any 1 of the open source projects out there and reduced to a downloadable iso image that anyone can burn for themself or they can buy a copy that comes with some docs or book with cd with profits going towards the free seed ring of something similar.

[ 26. May 2004, 16:50: Message edited by: psylogic ]

[Rev]

Well ive certainly got a similar project in mind for a mushroom growing digi-book including many of teh features you mentioned

But firts the FF methods pages - then expand to interactivity - that is i have to do, redo and then do to film all methods first!

I think the book would be better written in the conventional process with copyright and/or $ going to the people whose intellectual property is being published

some people just want their name in lights but for what id say looks like at least 2 years work (this is factual stuff - you cant just make it up like a fictitious book)

id say theyd nee a bit more encouragment

That said there could be more work put into it and a higher quality achieved for not necessarily a high price given the low production cost of the end product vs being in hardcopy

pretty much more $ to the editors/authors less to the printing company

You can print to demand and you can also edit erroneous sections easily without having a bixed run of 10 000 books all with the same error lying around.

[psylogic]

The problem you have with a publish for profit (not ment to sound like a newspaper headline) is to divy up the profits do you pay per word of each article/image/technique or do you just get a split of the total articles/chapter (how ever you want split the document up) times the amount of articles/chapter each author contributes. You could of course make a subscription based publication similar to industry magazines that take all the a percentage of profits for check artices and organisation etc then divy up the remainder along some predefined agreement.

[psylogic]

And then again it all sounds like a refurbished shroomery with a wikipedia stylising.

[spiders]

Paul Stamets has started work on a new addition of his Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World with many more type pics of subaeruginosa, etc and it will detail the rna studies being conducted by Pluteus to make sure of the delineation, etc.

[Rev]

I actually think that in the end any book like this worth its salt would have one, two or absolute max 3 authors, committed and skilled

Any more and itll turn into a committee...

The authors would be staking their proffessional reputation on the quality of the book so youd think itd be quality

as for other contributions, i imagine theyd be small but acknowledged, with the exception of the case where one photographer / artist comes on board with most of the pics and so essentially becomes a co-author

for example the collaboration bewtween Neil bougher (mycologist for the CSIRO) and Katie symes (Mushroom painter) in Fungi of southern Australia

one came with the info the other the artistry

Bruce's book should have been the same - his pictures with an (otherwise sterile) mycologists info

Im thinking you need a scientific photographer, an academic mycologist and an easily digested writer to make a masterpiece plus the psychedelic guzzling editor/producer to fit it together in a way that fully exploits the digital medium

so now ive defined it for myself i see that i am none of these :D so ill stick to my cultivation guide

[synchromesh]

Fungi Down Under - the Fungimap Guide to Australian Fungi

Pat Grey & Ed Grey

A Field Guide to the Fungi of Australia

A.M. Young

A Field Guide to Fungi of South-eastern Australia

Ross Macdonald & John Westerman

Fungi of the South-West Forests

Richard Robinson

Toadstools and Mushrooms and Other Larger Fungi of South Australia, Parts I and II

John Burton Cleland

As these are the only ones I've read, they're the only ones I can recommend. Cheers.

Edited October 6, 2010 by synchromesh

[obtuse]

Make sure you check out either:

A field companion to Australian fungi by Bruce Fuhrer

or

A field companion to Australian fungi by Bruce Fuhrer

The first is larger and more expnded version of the second.

the ones you mention synchromesh are all very good, but i much prefer the fuhrer books for visual identification. the descriptions in Young's "Field Guide to the Fungi of Australia " are very good though.

but as per the first post, a lot of mushroom books in the big book shops tend to be overseas, with either the Young or Fuhrer book, or both.

Cheers, Obtuse.

Edited October 6, 2010 by obtuse

[yaguareté]

I got a new book today.

Australian Fungi Illustrated, By I. R. McCann

here is the first link i found on google:

http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au/Australian-Fungi-Illustrated/Ian-McCann/book_9780975078006.htm

It seems ok, I have Bruce Fuhrer's companion to Australian fungi and it seems quite similar. Ie lots of nice pics but little to no info. It basically just gives a name of genus and where possible species and then where it was seen and when. I would say it is a bit better than fuhrers book in that it covers quite a few more shrooms, it crams a lot of pics into a little book.

Does anyone have any of the CSIRO's publications?

Australian Fungi 1a, 1b, 2a, or 2b. I was thinking of investing in these soon, its a pretty big investment though at $80 each.

Edited October 7, 2010 by yaguareté

[synchromesh]

the ones you mention synchromesh are all very good, but i much prefer the fuhrer books for visual identification. the descriptions in Young's "Field Guide to the Fungi of Australia " are very good though.

Why's that? Bigger photographs? I only ask as I was really impressed with the photography in Fungi Down Under.

Descriptions are just as valuable as photographs in my opinion. Being that different species of mushrooms can look very similar to one another, photos alone can't always be relied upon.

but as per the first post, a lot of mushroom books in the big book shops tend to be overseas, with either the Young or Fuhrer book, or both.

 

All of the books I listed can be bought in Australian shops. If anybody wants to know which ones, please feel free to send me a PM.