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.
What a useful book! Thanks for sharing.
This looks like a perfect mushroom hunting guidebook, as I’m sitting here on my deck looking at the fungus covering the tree trunk next door!
I live in beautiful Oregon, out of Little Fall Creek and am just getting into the mushrooms and foraging. Looking forward to next years truffles…
Good luck all. This is always fun. 🙂
I’ve never done any wildcrafting before this year. I’ve always been too afraid. I’ve been a subscriber of the Common Sense Homsteading feed for almost a year, and I’m finally finding all KINDS of things I never knew before! I’ve harvested wild mullein, burdock, nettle, jewelweed, yarrow, highbush cranberries and elderberries already thanks to this blog. Thank you so much!
The weather in our neck of the woods has been perfect for mushrooms. We have seen lots of new ( to us) ones this year. This book would be a welcome addition to our library.
We have had tons of rain and it has brought out a TON of mushroom varieties I haven’t seen in years!
I could totally use this.
This looks like a great resource book!
We just had some mushrooms pop up in our backyard. My mom thought they could be edible, but said to have dad check them out. Unfortunately he didn’t get over to our place in time… this would come in handy!
We love to eat mushrooms and would love to pick our own wild mushrooms but we are not familiar with the good and the bad. Living in the country with the mountains and the woods all around us there are millions of mushrooms just waiting to be picked. This book would be very helpful.
This would be a great thing to do with my children for school and we LOVE mushrooms!!!!
Love mushrooms. I bought shiitake plugs to try and grow my own, but we are in the middle of a move, so I haven’t tried it yet.
I so want to start foraging but am so worried that I’ll pick the wrong things. I need books with really good pictures to help me discern the different plants.
Nice book! Always have mushrooms popping up on the property and wondering if they’re edible.
My husband and I love to go mushroom hunting! We already have the book Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States: A Field-to-Kitchen Guide (Field-To-Kitchen Guides) by Joe McFarland and Gregory M. Mueller and this would be a great addition to our foraging library.
Fried Morel Mushrooms are my favorite… I look forward to spring pickings of them
I love to hunt mushrooms, this book would be great to have!
I have always wanted to know more about foraging for mushrooms.
What a great addition to a BOB this would be!!
Oh! I need this!
What a great reference book. Thanks for the chance to win it. Good luck everyone.