Beginner's Guide to Safely Foraging for Wild Mushrooms: Identifying and Collecting Mushrooms Sustainably with Confidence

by Karen Stephenson

A fun guide to foraging for mushrooms

There are thousands of mushroom species native to the woods, fields, and forests of North America, but how do you know which are safe to eat? This beginner’s guide will help you discover the diverse and fascinating world of mushrooms so you confidently enjoy nature’s bounty.

A beginner’s field guide—Discover the tools, techniques, and visual cues you need to sustainably and safely harvest wild mushrooms.Thirty-five mushroom varieties—Detailed descriptions and photos help you positively identify 30 commonly found, edible mushrooms, like chanterelles and lion’s manes, as well as five toxic mushrooms to avoid.Earth-friendly harvesting tips—Master sustainable harvesting practices, and learn the proper way to store and enjoy your harvest.

Get down and dirty with this safe guide to mushroom foraging.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2022

Reviews

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book for the novice wild mushroom forager that profiles 30 mushroom species that are easily identifiable with few to no toxic lookalikes.

Part one has a mini mycology lesson and goes over the anatomy of mushrooms. Part two is divided into chapters on non-gilled and gilled mushrooms, and a final chapter profiling five deadly mushrooms to avoid.

I would have liked more pictures that show the mushrooms in various life stages or had different angles/cross sections. Overall a good book for the beginner to gain some baseline knowledge to get out and start foraging with confidence. I’m looking forward to reading more in-depth books on mycology after this one.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great pictures, very clear instructions and appropriate focus on safety! Super interesting.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

[Lastblossom]

tl;dr
A great book for beginners with a focus on easily identifiable edible mushrooms that have few or no lookalikes.

Thoughts
Foraging for mushrooms can be very dangerous, with many mushroom lookalikes and difficult-to-identify variations out there. This book eschews most of those in favor of a handful of distinct mushrooms that a beginner might be able to identify with ease. Because of this, it doesn't cover quite as many mushrooms as other field guides might, but it's a very strong place to start. Notes on identification, along with best ways to harvest, and how to tell them apart from potential lookalikes, are present. A handful of notes on flavor profile and how/when to prepare are greatly appreciated. The final chapter covers several deadly mushrooms to avoid, which is also a great thing to learn. Credits in the front list all the photos as stock images, so I won't really review the quality of those here. I wouldn't have minded seeing several of mushrooms in their various stages of life, but the photos that are included get the job done admirably. As always, foraging with a local expert is the only way to be certain, but you'll get more out of it if you read this book before you go.

Thanks to NetGalley and Callisto Media for the advance copy. All thoughts in this review are my own.

[Juineve · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Disclosure* I was provided with an advance copy of the book for reviewing purposes.

Karen Stephenson's "Beginner's Guide to Safely Foraging for Wild Mushrooms" is a fantastic and easy to navigate book for the novice mushroom forager. I do strongly recommend going with someone who knows a little bit about it, which is how I started - so it is a little hard for me to truly assess as I have either found many of the mushrooms already, or have not found any new-to-me ones since getting the book. However that goes to tell you that she has curated a fantastic collection of easy-to-find, hard-to-mistake mushrooms for the beginning forager - with fantastic pictures and descriptions and great safety tips, this is a great beginner guide.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beginner's Guide to Safely Foraging for Wild Mushrooms by Karen Stephenson is nicely arranged with details including what mushrooms actually are, the three types (saprotrophic, parasitic and mycorrhizal), simple anatomy, spore prints, seasonal information, equipment, photographing fungi, how to harvest and what to do with it. The author then describes thirty edible and five toxic mushrooms (the latter are even more important to know than edibles) with habitat, identification characteristics, taste profile, lookalikes, and so on.

As a expert forager who knows these mushrooms inside and out, let me say you need knowledgeable foraging guidance when first starting out, a passion to learn and guides such as this which are not daunting or overwhelming with scientific information which will naturally come later.

My only criticism is the lack of illustrations and photographs at various life stages and from various angles. Knowing what "babies" versus "adults" look like is crucial, especially when it comes to identifying deadly Amanitas. However, this is still a great starting point and inspiration for those eager to get out and explore! There is absolutely nothing as gratifying as mushroom foraging and identifying. Highly addictive! Once you start you will look for mushrooms in every situation.

This guide is written in an easy-to-read format with excellent tips, hints and strategies, perfect for the absolute beginner who has no idea where to start. Refer to it over and over and take it with you on your forays.

My sincere thank you to Callista Media and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this fabulous book.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Beginner's Guide to Safely Foraging for Wild Mushrooms" is aimed at beginners to foraging wild mushrooms. The author generally picked mushrooms that don't have unsafe, similar-looking mushrooms. However, she did include identification information and pictures for the really poisonous ones, too, to help you avoid them. She started with some basic information about mushrooms and the different parts used for identification (with pictures, so you can see the differences). She also talked about foraging for mushrooms and how to collect, process, use or store them. She then had identification sections for 11 easy-to-spot, 4 medium difficulty, and 5 hard to spot wild mushrooms. The identification pages had a picture of the mushroom and information on the name, type, description, habitat, where to find it, when to harvest, look-alikes (and how to tell them apart), taste profile, keys to positive ID, spore print ID, and tips on foraging and storage. Overall, this seems like a good beginners guide, though I haven't taken it out to try using it yet.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through Amazon Vine.

[Michaela | Reading in the Heartland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grabbed this book because I have young kids and we have various mushrooms growing in our yard and around our small town. I don’t know anything about mushrooms and wanted to be better educated on what my kids may be coming into contact with.

This book was extremely detailed, but in a way the layman amateur can understand and follow. It was interesting learning about all the different parts of mushrooms that I didn’t even know existed. I will definitely be keeping it loaded on my kindle for easy reference. I like how detailed the author is on the small details for deciphering the toxicity possibilities of the mushrooms. An excellent resource.

[JadersCorner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arc netgalley review both in app and kindle

This book is everything I’ve been looking for and more. I’ve been deep diving into mushrooms and foraging, and there is all kinda of info out there but this author clearly gives everything a beginner need within these pages. This is a instant buy and keep on hand. I’ll be keeping this paired with my journal as well.

[Stacy Van Buskirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very informative for a first-time mushroom forager. It made identifying mushrooms easy with the descriptions and pictures included in the book. The tips and advice to foraging will be useful to me this spring as I try to find more edible mushrooms in my home forests in western North Carolina.

[Leah B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fun, helpful, and clear guide! I borrowed this from the library and will 100% be buying a copy for my own shelf to take on foraging outings one day.

[Kerrific Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A needed book for mushroom lovers. Perfect to take with you on your hunting adventure! I wish some of the terms had phenetic spelling but other than that an amazing resource.