The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms - Everything You Need to Know, from Foraging to Cultivating

Discover, identify, harvest, and grow mushrooms with confidence—no experience required.

The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms is the complete starter handbook to mushroom identification, foraging, cultivation, and cooking, written by two leading mycology experts.
Mushroom foraging and identification can feel intimidating to newcomers. This accessible field guide + how-to manual removes the guesswork and gives you the knowledge and skills to start safely.
Inside, you’ll learn:

• Mushroom identification basics: anatomy, key visual traits, spore prints, habitat clues, and how to confidently distinguish edible wild mushrooms from poisonous look-alikes.
• Top wild mushrooms for beginners: large photos, clear descriptions, seasonality, geographic range, and foraging tips.
• Home mushroom cultivation: step-by-step illustrated tutorials for growing mushrooms indoors or outdoors—from kits to logs to DIY methods.
• Cooking & preserving mushrooms: simple techniques for cleaning, storing, dehydrating, and using mushrooms in delicious recipes year-round.
• Mushroom ecology & medicinal benefits: learn how fungi support healthy forests, soil regeneration, and sustainable living.

Whether you're exploring the woods for your first morel, starting a home mushroom grow, or simply curious about the natural world, this book gives you everything you need to join the growing community of mushroom enthusiasts.

Your journey into mycology starts here—identify mushrooms with confidence, forage responsibly, and enjoy the incredible world of fungi.

List of contents

Part I The Basics
Part II Mushrooms: Identification
Part 2.1. Agarics with Pale Spores
Part 2.2. Agarics with Pink Spores
Part 2.3. Agarics with Brown Spores
Part 2.4. Agarics with Dark Spores
Part 2.5. Stalked Mushrooms with Teeth or Spines
Part 2.6. Astipitate Mushrooms with Teeth or Spines
Part 2.7. Mushrooms with Stalk, Cap, and Pores
Part 2.8. Mushrooms with Stalk and Wrinkled, Cone-shaped, or Saddle-shaped Cap
Part 2.9. Shelf-like Mushrooms with Pores
Part 2.10. Shelf-like Mushrooms with Gills
Part 2.11. Cup-like Mushrooms 9
Part 2.12. Ball-shaped Mushrooms
Part 2.13. Coral-like Mushrooms
Part 2.14. Simple Club-shaped Stalk Mushrooms that Arise from Soil or Wood
Part 2.15. Jelly-like Mushrooms
Part 2.16. Crusts and Mushroom Oddities
Part III Mushroom Cultivation
Part IV Culinary Uses and Preservation
Resources
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Index
 

About the author

Britt Bunyard, PhD, is the founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the mycology journal Fungi. Britt has worked academically as a mycologist his entire career, writing scientifically for many research journals, popular science magazines, and books, most recently Mushrooms and Macrofungi of Ohio and Midwestern States (2012) by The Ohio State University Press. He has served as an editor for mycological and entomological research journals, and mushroom guide books. A popular evangelizer on all things fungal, Britt has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS’s NOVA and Wisconsin Foodie television programs, and in The Atlantic, Vogue, Forbes, Saveur, Women’s World, and others. He serves as Executive Director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival. He is the co-author of The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms (Quarry Books), author of Amanitas of North America book (The FUNGI Press), and. co-editor of MycoEpithalamia: Mushroom Wedding Poems (The FUNGI Press). Tavis Lynch has been studying mushrooms for over three decades and teaches several mycology classes throughout the Upper Midwest. He is a regular guest on Wisconsin Public Radio and has been featured on “Around the Farm Table” on PBS. He owns and operates a large-scale mushroom farm in the north woods, growing mushrooms with a unique method that he developed. He is the author of Mushroom Cultivation and the co-author of The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms.

Summary

The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms is your ultimate guide to mycology. Whether you’ve never picked a mushroom before in your life or you’ve been cultivating mushrooms at home for ages, the expert advice in this comprehensive mushroom manual will transform your practice.
Never before have mushrooms generated so much interest, for their health benefits and medicinal properties, as well as a new understanding of their crucial role in a healthy environment and ability to regenerate damaged ones. If you are a newcomer, mycology, or the study of mushrooms and other fungi, can seem daunting. While other field guides are geared toward experts with advanced knowledge or regional in scope and aimed at only a few easy-to-recognize mushrooms, The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms by veteran mycologists Britt A. Bunyard and Tavis Lynch is a complete reference and guidebook to get you started identifying, cultivating, cooking, and preserving mushrooms.
The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms opens with important basics about wild mushrooming and how to use the book. Information about what fungi are and their role in the environment and around the home is provided in brief and very understandable terms. Basic wild mushroom anatomy is discussed along with how to identify mushrooms and various characteristics to look for—of great importance if you are interested in learning how to recognize edible wild species…as well as dangerous look-alikes. The guide then covers:

• All the major groups of wild mushrooms, pointing out habitat, region, and notable characteristics—large photographs with easy-to-view characteristics facilitate correct identification. 
• Mushroom cultivation—with easy-to-follow illustrated instructions, learn how to grow mushrooms at home, including how to collect wild specimens and domesticate them.
• Culinary uses and how to preserve wild mushrooms to be enjoyed in the kitchen all year round.

Begin your wonderful exploration of wild mushrooms with this accessible yet thorough beginner's guide.

Additional text

"...an interesting introduction to the mushroom world."

Product details

• Authors: Britt Bunyard, Tavis Lynch
• Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.12.2020
• EAN: 9781631599118
• ISBN: 978-1-63159-911-8
• No. of pages: 160
• Illustrations: color photos
• Subjects: Guides > Nature > Nature guide; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Botany; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works; SPORTS & RECREATION / Outdoor Skills, NATURE / Reference, natural history, Gardening: plants, Gardening: plants and cultivation guides, Mycology, fungi (non-medical), Trees, wildflowers and plants: general interest, Mycology, fungi, NATURE / Fungi & Mushrooms