Product Description

This handy, practical guide offers a quick way for beginners to identify mushrooms and toadstools Collins Gem Mushrooms describes almost 240 species of mushrooms and toadstools to be commonly found in Britain. Portable and clear, it is the ideal guide for those out foraging for fungi! Each mushroom or toadstool entry includes: / A photograph, illustration and clear description of its appearance / Details of size, habitat and when it can be found / Whether it is edible or poisonous / The names of similar species with which the mushrooms or toadstools could be confused, and details of the differences between them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3289 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
As a lecturer at Sheffield University and elsewhere, Patrick Harding lead courses on subjects ranging from identification of fungi, flowers and trees, to plants in medicine, the plant hunters and nature photography. His previous books include How to Identify Edible Mushrooms, How to Identify Trees and Wild Flowers of the Peak District.

Customer Reviews

a good pocket-sized guide, well illustrated
This little guide identifies a wide selection of funghi by reference to excellent photographs - much better than many of the artists' representations in some of the larger, dearer and more scholarly books.
There are short,sharp details about habitat, season and something of each specimen's histology. The book errs on the side of caution when dealing with edibility - so this is a book which could be given to a keen young explorer without too much risk of poisoning!
We keep a copy in the foraging basket, and refer to the more heavyweight volumes when we get home. It has much to recommend it.

A very compact source of good information
I went on a fungas foray with the author of this book last year and it was extremely interesting and great fun. This book, although small, is packed full of the stuff I learned and much more information that gives me the confidence to go hunting on my own. It's the perfect size to pop in your pocket or basket while out walking.

One of the great things about it is that it identifies other species that can be confused with what you might have found. This allows you to double check and should make any mushroom hunting a lot safer.

A great little guide
This is a great book to give more detail on this sort of wild food for anyone learning survival skills or bushcraft. I recently bought it to accompany the new Trueways Survival Skills with John 'Lofty' Wiseman [Interactive DVD] - together they make a superb way to quickly get up to speed with living off the land and especially survival skills or bushcraft.

To summarise, this is a great little book.