Mushrooms and Other Non-Flowering Plants

The little golden Guides started out with very basic subjects on bird and mammal identification, reptiles, rocks and minerals, the stars, and a few others back in the late 40s and early 50s. The line expanded greatly in the 60s and eventually included very specialized subjects such as structural geology (the book on Landforms), the book on The Heart, Spiders and Their Relatives, Insect Pests, Pond Life, and even books on hobbies such as Fishing, Cameras and Photography, and Guns. This was probably the most advanced and specialized topic they ever did a book on, and given that it's only 256 pages in length, it's actually quite good. It covers all the cryptogamic or the spore-producing plant groups, which includes the better known fungi such as the well known club fungi or "toadstools," lesser known fungi such as ascomycetes, ferns, mosses, and liverworts. It's strongest on the club fungi, or basidiomycetes, which is fine. Be aware that one book like this should not be used as a field identification manual in the case of fungi, since a mistake there could be fatal, if you intend to consume them, due to the many poisonous species in the genus Amanita, and others such as Cortinarius and Galerina, which also contain potentially deadly species. The book's illustrations are also paintings and not photos, and for mushroom identification, photos are best, and the only sure way is to look at the spores under a microscope. If you're intending to gather and eat mushrooms, real training under a skilled and experienced and knowledgeable expert is essential. You should join the mycology society in your area, such as the North American Mycological Society and learn from their experienced members on collecting trips before ever attempting to do this on your own. A number of deaths have occurred from people without adequate training trying to do this, and on my own collecting expeditions I occasionally saw people carrying poisonous mushrooms who said they were looking for psychedelic species, and fortunately I encountered them and was able to inform them of their mistake before they ate them. But for educating yourself on a very specialized topic, this little book is a great place to start. Before doing that, however, I would read the Golden Guide, Botany, to get a general background on botany before tackling this area, unless you're already knowledgeable in botany.

This pocket-sized guide proves useful when identifying mushrooms, lichens, mosses and ferns. The full color illustrations and a short written description aid in identification. There are newer guides out there, but this gets you started. I wouldn't use this to select mushrooms for eating, but it helped me identify a lichen I found this week (Red Crest Lichen). Now I know the difference between lichens and mosses which I'd previously lumped together. I've started a moss garden, so I found the diagram of a moss' life cycle interesting.