Everything You Need to Know, from Foraging to Cultivating
The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms is your ultimate guide to mycology. Whether you've never picked a mushroom before in your life or you've been cultivating mushrooms at home for ages, the expert advice in this comprehensive mushroom manual will transform your practice. Never before have mushrooms generated so much interest, for their health benefits and medicinal properties, as well as a new understanding of their crucial role in a healthy environment and ability to regenerate damaged ones. If you are a newcomer, mycology, or the study of mushrooms and other fungi, can seem daunting. While other field guides are geared toward experts with advanced knowledge or regional in scope and aimed at only a few easy-to-recognize mushrooms, The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms by veteran mycologists Britt A. Bunyard and Tavis Lynch is a complete reference and guidebook to get you started identifying, cultivating, cooking, and preserving mushrooms. The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms opens with important basics about wild mushrooming and how to use the book. Information about what fungi are and their role in the environment and around the home is provided in brief and very understandable terms. Basic wild mushroom anatomy is discussed along with how to identify mushrooms and various characteristics to look for—of great importance if you are interested in learning how to recognize edible wild species…as well as dangerous look-alikes. The guide then covers:
All the major groups of wild mushrooms, pointing out habitat, region, and notable characteristics—large photographs with easy-to-view characteristics facilitate correct identification.
Mushroom cultivation—with easy-to-follow illustrated instructions, learn how to grow mushrooms at home, including how to collect wild specimens and domesticate them.
Culinary uses and how to preserve wild mushrooms to be enjoyed in the kitchen all year round.
Begin your wonderful exploration of wild mushrooms with this accessible yet thorough beginner's guide.
This book is a pictorial guide to the most commonly encountered mushrooms of North America and Europe. References to “West” means west of the Rocky Mountains, and “East” is east of the Rocky Mountains. In some cases, the geographic range will be noted as restricted to the Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, or the like in North America. For Europe, general geographic restrictions, if any, will be noted as “Mediterranean,” “northern Europe,” and so on. Besides geographic location and time, this book bases identification of mushrooms on macro-characteristics of mushrooms as well as, at times, tastes and smells. It is safe to handle any mushroom—even deadly poisonous species.
Mushrooms: The Basics
There are more than 100,000 named species of fungi on the planet, though mycologists (scientists who pursue the study of fungi) suggest there are more than a million (and likely several times that number) species awaiting discovery. Fungi have a heterotrophic lifestyle, which means, like animals, they cannot create their own energy and basic cellular materials from an energy source in the environment (in contrast to plants, which can harness sunlight energy). Therefore, most fungi make a living by doing one of three things in the environment: decomposing other organic matter that was once living, parasitizing a living host (many animal and probably most plant diseases are caused by fungi), or becoming beneficial partners with other organisms, especially plants. The more we learn about fungi, the more we see that the healthy function of the natural world around us is closely tied to them.
Mushrooms: Identification
If you learn and follow the basic steps in this book, you will be well on your way to proficiency with wild mushroom identification Although this book is suitable for beginners, even experts follow these same steps when trying to figure out a wild mushroom Before you pick that mushroom: Be observant All factors are clues that you can use to make an identification What is the habitat? Temperate forest, prairie, desert, rainforest, Mediterranean, etc ? Are there trees nearby, and are they conifer, broadleaf, or a mix?
Mushroom Cultivation
Some mushrooms are mycorrhizal partners of trees and other plants, as we have discussed Mycorrhizal fungi cannot be cultivated Many other mushrooms, however, are saprobic in nature—they decompose organic material and those can be cultivated Mushroom cultivation relies on the basic principle of introducing an organism to a food source Mushrooms and other fungi digest organic material and draw that nutrition to a reproductive structure that we call a mushroom, or a fruiting body It is the reproductive part of a fungus The fungal mycelium secretes enzymes to break down the nutritious matter it encounters To cultivate mushrooms at home, you can start with a mushroom, mushroom spores, or spawn (a culture of the fungus, typically on grain or sawdust) Spawn can be purchased, and it is a great option for beginners For the advanced mycophile, there are multiple ways to make your own spawn at home, starting with a piece of mushroom or spores.
Culinary Uses and Preservation
This part is all about what to do with your favorite wild and cultivated mushrooms, now that you have them We’ll discuss how to prepare and preserve them, after which we’ve included some of our favorite mushroom recipes
About the Authors
Britt Bunyard, PhD, is the founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the mycology journal Fungi. Britt has worked academically as a mycologist his entire career, writing scientifically for many research journals, popular science magazines, and books, most recently Mushrooms and Macrofungi of Ohio and Midwestern States (2012) by The Ohio State University Press. He has served as an editor for mycological and entomological research journals, and mushroom guide books. A popular evangelizer on all things fungal, Britt has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS’s NOVA and Wisconsin Foodie television programs, and in The Atlantic, Vogue, Forbes, Saveur, Women’s World, and others. He serves as Executive Director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival. He is the co-author of The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms (Quarry Books), author of Amanitas of North America book (The FUNGI Press), and. co-editor of MycoEpithalamia: Mushroom Wedding Poems (The FUNGI Press).
Tavis Lynch has been studying mushrooms for over three decades and teaches several mycology classes throughout the Upper Midwest. He is a regular guest on Wisconsin Public Radio and has been featured on "Around the Farm The Farm Table" on PBS. He owns and operates a large scale mushroom farm in the north woods, growing mushrooms with a unique method that he developed. He is the author of Mushroom Cultivation (Quarto) and the co-author of The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms (Quarto).
Buy the Book!
One (1) lucky reader will win a copy of The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms: Everything You Need to Know, from Foraging to Cultivating! The giveaway will end January 5th, 2021 at 11:45 p.m. CST.
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