Foraging books

[Frnc]

Managed to get a copy of the Marcel Bon book today for about £7 including postage. It's usually about £40. I was half expecting a similarly titled book which goes for about a fiver, but is good anyway. This book is useful because it's small enough to take into the field.

I've also splashed out and ordered a print of the Mycokey wheels, which are 184 pages (92 page pdf, but each one is two pages from the book in landscape) out of the 2 volume Fungi of Temperate Europe, which is about 1600 pages. I ordered it as 92 pages of A3.

[Frnc]

I am looking forward to the mushroom season. Hopefully we’ll get proper rain in September,and that will cause a good flush of fungus. We get a good crop of wood and field blewitts, puffballs, parasols and morels as a rule. My old friend and me have a mooch locally on Sundays during Autumn,along with a catapult apiece,and we often nail a pigeon or pheasant.

I've never seen a parasol. Only just started reading about fungi. But I just happened to notice parasols when I was looking at my Fungi of Temperate Europe. I was actually looking up Horse Mushrooms which are Agaricus, and the next group on the wheel is Coprinoids. The wheel says "gills free and persistent" for Agarics and "gills free and deliquescent" for Coprinoids. I was trying to figure out what persistent and deliquescent mean. I think persistent means the gills last, and deliquescent means they dissolve. But when you get to Parasols (via the Coprinoid wheel) you read that the gills don't actually dissolve, but they shrivel and curl. Anyway, they look exactly like parasols!

[Frnc]

Ordered a second hand copy of Hickey and King, botany glossary. The good thing about this book is half of it is drawings in order of appearance, so you can look things up by appearance and find out what it's called. It's been on my wish list for ages but I saw one for £19 including postage. Cheapest new is £36 when they reduce it a bit.

[Frnc]

Got my printout of the wheels. Cost more than the average book. Anyway, quality was good. Probelm though, it's A3 and if you fold them in half or cut them in half, the sequence goes. The wheels are across two halves of A3, so you have to preserve that. But A3 is unweidly. I opted for folding them in half. This way I can pull out a folded sheet and the wheel will be intact, one side or the other (or maybe both). I don't know if it would have been better to split the pages using software before printing. Maybe not. Can't get my head around that. I put the two heavy volumes of the book these are from on top to flatten them.

[Frnc]

I've just realised, what are commonly called Parasols, and the Parasola genus, are not the same thing at all! Parasols are Macrolepiota procera. https://www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-guide/parasol/

Macrolepiota is a genus of white spored, gilled mushrooms of the family Agaricaceae.

Parasola is a genus of coprinoid mushrooms in the family Psathyrellaceae.

[Frnc]

Please note, in the little Gem book, Honey Fungus and Velvet Shank are listed. There is no mention that these can both be confused with Funeral Bell.

So also can Sheathed Woodtuft. The entry for this does mention this.

[steptoe]

I would say if you are going foraging for MUSHROOMS books are ok but there are a few very very POISONUS ones that minic the edibles and they can be hard to tell until you have a trained eye , if you do go either take someone who knows or be very careful if in doubt throw it out s the rule , unless you can be 100% sure you got an eater do not risk it some may just give you a bit of belly ache through to the runs and a little worse but others can kill in a flash and not even paramedics with all the drugs in the world can save you from some of them .

Nice to forage but do it very carefully

Watch the river cottage episode where huge and john take afriend each and have to collect the most varied items to make a meal watch when huge shows john the basket of mushrooms and john points out thet the ones huge thinks are good are poisonus

[jansman]

I would say if you are going foraging for MUSHROOMS books are ok but there are a few very very POISONUS ones that minic the edibles and they can be hard to tell until you have a trained eye , if you do go either take someone who knows or be very careful if in doubt throw it out s the rule , unless you can be 100% sure you got an eater do not risk it some may just give you a bit of belly ache through to the runs and a little worse but others can kill in a flash and not even paramedics with all the drugs in the world can save you from some of them .

Nice to forage but do it very carefully

Watch the river cottage episode where huge and john take afriend each and have to collect the most varied items to make a meal watch when huge shows john the basket of mushrooms and john points out thet the ones huge thinks are good are poisonus

Agreed. We have half a dozen mushrooms locally that are both consistent and edible. My dad taught me when I was a lad. That’s what I stick to. It’s a short harvest time anyway, about now to end of November here. We need some proper rain though to get good flushes this year.

For us ,here , it’s Parasols, Horse mushrooms, Field Blewitts, Wood Blewitts, puffballs, Morels and yesterday I found a real rare one - Chicken in the woods.

[steptoe]

I would say if you are going foraging for MUSHROOMS books are ok but there are a few very very POISONUS ones that minic the edibles and they can be hard to tell until you have a trained eye , if you do go either take someone who knows or be very careful if in doubt throw it out s the rule , unless you can be 100% sure you got an eater do not risk it some may just give you a bit of belly ache through to the runs and a little worse but others can kill in a flash and not even paramedics with all the drugs in the world can save you from some of them .

Nice to forage but do it very carefully

Watch the river cottage episode where huge and john take afriend each and have to collect the most varied items to make a meal watch when huge shows john the basket of mushrooms and john points out thet the ones huge thinks are good are poisonus

Agreed. We have half a dozen mushrooms locally that are both consistent and edible. My dad taught me when I was a lad. That’s what I stick to. It’s a short harvest time anyway, about now to end of November here. We need some proper rain though to get good flushes this year.

For us ,here , it’s Parasols, Horse mushrooms, Field Blewitts, Wood Blewitts, puffballs, Morels and yesterday I found a real rare one - Chicken in the woods.

Wow mate you got a real bonus with that ,my dad use to wander off when we use to go caravaning in the 70's and come back with a big pan of mushrooms we all use to swear he would go to a local shop but he told us as a kid in ireland on a farm during war time anything was a bonus and mushrooms where just that , he and his younger brothers use to sneak off light a fire and cook them in the woods because well long life story but they had been farmed out as their mother died when young and their dad could not manage with 15 kids

[jansman]

I would say if you are going foraging for MUSHROOMS books are ok but there are a few very very POISONUS ones that minic the edibles and they can be hard to tell until you have a trained eye , if you do go either take someone who knows or be very careful if in doubt throw it out s the rule , unless you can be 100% sure you got an eater do not risk it some may just give you a bit of belly ache through to the runs and a little worse but others can kill in a flash and not even paramedics with all the drugs in the world can save you from some of them .

Nice to forage but do it very carefully

Watch the river cottage episode where huge and john take afriend each and have to collect the most varied items to make a meal watch when huge shows john the basket of mushrooms and john points out thet the ones huge thinks are good are poisonus

Agreed. We have half a dozen mushrooms locally that are both consistent and edible. My dad taught me when I was a lad. That’s what I stick to. It’s a short harvest time anyway, about now to end of November here. We need some proper rain though to get good flushes this year.

For us ,here , it’s Parasols, Horse mushrooms, Field Blewitts, Wood Blewitts, puffballs, Morels and yesterday I found a real rare one - Chicken in the woods.

Wow mate you got a real bonus with that ,my dad use to wander off when we use to go caravaning in the 70's and come back with a big pan of mushrooms we all use to swear he would go to a local shop but he told us as a kid in ireland on a farm during war time anything was a bonus and mushrooms where just that , he and his younger brothers use to sneak off light a fire and cook them in the woods because well long life story but they had been farmed out as their mother died when young and their dad could not manage with 15 kids

My dad was a talented country lad. He taught me to do the above, fish ( my passion!) , shoot, and use a catapult - which is good , as I can nail game quietly without the sound of a gun! Also , he had a big vegetable garden and fowls and rabbits. So do I!

He did all that as a necessity- there was little money back then- and we lived better than a lot of neighbours as a result.