The Pocket Guide to Wild Mushrooms Review
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The Pocket Guide to Wild Mushrooms by Pella Holmberg and Hans Marklund is a great resource for any wild food forager.
While no book can take the place of an experienced guide, this pocket guide should provide you with the information you need to forage safely for mushroom varieties that are new to you.
Fall is typically prime season for many mushroom varieties, so I am looking forward to taking this book out with me more later this year. I shared it with my neighbor last week, and if the weather cooperates this fall (you need rain for mushrooms, and it’s been a dry summer), we’re going to go investigating in their woods to see what we can find.
How The Pocket Guide to Wild Mushrooms is Organized
The book begins with an introduction and discussion of what exactly mushrooms are and where they are likely to be found. It then continues with a thorough explanation of proper picking, cleaning and preparation.
The authors also note that mushrooms contain fiber, important minerals, antioxidants and vitamins B and D in significant amounts. Not bad for a “free” food. This book focuses on varieties that are suitable for cooking (edible varieties), but also gives mention to potentially inedible look-alikes, if any.
Given that the authors hail from northern Europe, so too are the mushroom varieties featured in the book generally found in northern forests.
Each mushroom is categorized from 1 to 4, with 1 being the easiest to identify with only edible mushrooms that look similar, to 4 being those that are edible but could be confused with poisonous lookalikes.
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You can stick with the #1 mushrooms (or beginner mushrooms) when you are just starting out and nervous about your identification skills.
In the interest of thoroughness, the authors also offer a detailed description of the potential symptoms of mushrooms poisoning. Stay safe, folks.
The bulk of the book is filled with two page spreads of52 edible mushrooms featuring detailed photos of the mushrooms in studio conditions, including cross sections, and photos of the mushroom in its natural habitat.
Each entry provides a description with distinguishing features, a guide to preparing and preserving, and a description and photo of look-alike mushrooms.
I particularly appreciate the extremely detailed photography with horizontal and vertical cross sections of the mushrooms. As anyone who has done any amount of foraging can tell you, good photos make or break a guide book. These qualify as good photos.
The Pocket Guide to Wild Mushrooms is a useful addition to the library of any northern wild food forager, and the photos are beautiful enough that it would make a good “coffee table book” as well.
This post originally included a giveaway, which has now ended.
I need this. Looks great!
I have mushrooms ( a few different varieties) growing in my yard and would love to know if they’re edible. There are still others that grow in the woods across the street – this would be amazing!
We LOVE morels here but I’d eat any and all edibles if I knew which ones they were!
My mom and I were just talking the other day about learning what mushrooms are okay to pick. What a great book!
My in-laws forage for wild mushrooms. They’re from Italy and very old country. Amazing finds too. Love going with them!
I have picked chantrells and shaggy manes but would really like to know more about different ones so I can forage for them
This looks like a wonderful book.
One summer I went mushrooming with Russian friends in the mountains above Salt Lake City. They were experienced gatherers and together we collected enough mushrooms to spend the rest of the evening processing, cooking, and eating a fabulous meal of a variety of mushrooms. I went home with enough pickled mushrooms to last for a month. It was a memorable experience.
This would be great, as we hunt for mushrooms already, but only morels, and a couple different fall mushrooms. Thanks for such great giveaways, whoever gets this one is sure to put it to great use.
Love mushrooms but really have limited experience on what kinds of mushrooms are out there. This really looks like the right guide for safe hunting and eating!!!!!!!!
My husband and I have always wanted to gather mushrooms but never new which ones were edible. The book would help us so much, and it seems to have great picture and description’s. Thank you so much for the opportunity to win this book, and for all of the hard work that u put into your site.
I would love to know more than just morels!
This would help me out so much!! Thanks!!
I would love to learn more as I live with woods all around me.
Awesome! Just in time for fall mushrooming! Thanks for the opportunity!
I’ve eaten morels and puffballs before, but would love to be able to recognise more species, edible or not!
Purslane “pickle” Relish. Purslane grows rampant in my veggie garden. I thought it was okay to eat, brought it in looked it up washed it chopped it smallish poured leftover homemade pickle juice over it. Hid it in the fridge for like a week, then sprung it on the family! They had no idea it was a weed, but I didn’t try it until they said it was good! And it was good.
Very cool!
I blogged an interesting “foraging encounter” a while back. 😉 http://tocomefullcircle.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/a-scary-run-in-with-nature-and-lessons-learned/
I try and learn a few new wild edibles to collect and eat every season and always wanted to learn more about which mushrooms to harvest. This is perfect for that!
Looks like an awesome book!