Mushroom Wanderland: A Forager's Guide to Finding, Identifying, and Using More Than 25 Wild Fungi

by Jess Starwood

The breathtaking beauty of mushrooms from a master how to identify and use them in cooking, home remedies, and spirituality. Foraging for mushrooms is a meditative and rewarding escape. Even if readers aren’t ready to head out into the woods, this enchanting visual guide is a welcome introduction to 25 easily identifiable species, organized by location and use. Author Jess Starwood has led hundreds of foraging trips, sharing her knowledge of nature with students. This, her first book, is a celebration of fungi―perfect for both beginner and longtime mushroom admirers. No matter their use, all mushrooms have specific characteristics that are easy to recognize with the right teacher. Under Starwood’s guidance, readers will learn to identify caps, stipes, gills, and pores. They’ll encounter species such as Reishi, Lion’s Mane, Candy Cap, Chanterelle, and more; learn the best harvesting seasons; and enjoy delicious recipes using culinary favorites. But, above all, this guide will have readers growing their connection to nature and dreaming of the wonderful world of fungi. 75 color photographs

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Nature

208 pages, Hardcover

Published August 17, 2021

Reviews

[Abigail Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative! Wish the author gave more detail on regional time frames of when specific mushrooms can be found. She often limited this to east coast and west coast. Beautiful photography.

[Connie Pilachowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

The photography is beautiful and that's actually why I picked this book up. However I have a couple small qualms about it.

I would have preferred the recipes and dehydration tips in the back of the book, not before "meeting the mushrooms." And although there are a lot of pictures, I kept wanting more. Or just different views of the mushroom. If you talk about the distinct gills, then I want to see the gills, not two pictures from above. If it has a poisonous counterpart, I would have liked to see it and compare. Adding it to the page might be confusing so maybe adding a page number so I can flip between them? Finally, there were no identifications on the photos themselves. In the ID section, this is fine, but the introduction and recipe pages have lots of photos with nothing telling me what type of mushroom they are.

Overall this is a good "get your feet wet" kind of book.

[Ko Kojira · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this expecting a pretty clinical and dry foraging guide for fungi- and while I did find a lot of useful information and tips on edible mushrooms I also found a wonderfully written book about respecting and sharing the beauty of the natural world. Starwood clearly has had a lifelong passion for the wonderous world of shrooms and I'm glad to have learned from her.

[Emily Bragg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous, and lots of fun info. Has some ID info, but definitely not sufficient for that purpose

[ANNA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful for learning about mushrooms. I need it for a fiber art project.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent coffee table/art/foraging guide/interesting to reference to/ would come back to finish sometime though I didn't read the whole way through.