Book Review:
Mushroooms of North America
Mushrooms of North America, the complete identification reference
No author cited on cover.
Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher. 2023
Flexibound Paperback, 711 pages
ISBN: 978-0599319987
Any review of the new National Audubon Society “Mushrooms of North America” needs to acknowledge the elephant in the room: Gary Lincoff and his pioneering 1981 book by the same publishers. Many here in NAMA have an enduring affection for Gary and his “little book.” It served us well for many years, and some might find this new version a bit of an upstart. But, we cannot judge these two books by the same measure. They were produced in different times, and with a different focus. The original book by Lincoff had a bit of an eastern bias, limited photographic references, good descriptions including spore data and plenty of information on both edibility and toxicology. It was also highly portable, in the spirit of a true field guide.
This new Audubon book doesn’t really try to be a field guide in the same sense. A large and heavy book, it contains 660 species and 2,900 photos, taken by 965+ or – photographers. It refers to itself as “the complete identification reference to mushrooms” and for the first time includes reasons why we should care about mushrooms, various avenues of research on and with fungi, the daunting efforts of describing fungi, and how little we really know about North American species, and even touches upon some of the potential new tech uses of fungi for bio-remediation, building materials and fungal medicine. Well-known professional mycologists Roo Vandergrift and Else Vellinga wrote these introductory paragraphs. Unlike for Audubon’s flagship organisms the birds, fungi are not well beloved or well known by the majority of American readers, and it seems like these introductory paragraphs attempted to give people a reason to care. I am not sure how this information actually helps in a so-called identification reference.
Conservation status is emphasized in the pages preceding mushroom descriptions, and is also a focus in the three other books (birds, trees and flowers) within this updated Audubon nature series. Certainly birds are well studied, and they show up regularly for their counts. This meticulous data has been published and can be referenced and compared over many decades. Trends can be seen. But actual conservation status of most of these fungi is unknown, and likely to remain so, due to the unreliability of collections over time. Fungi do not always show up for our surveys.
Most fungi have not been analyzed as to occurrence and threats; it is the habitats where they live that are threatened. The sporadic use of Nature-Serve Explorer “G” ratings within this volume is often wrong! How can one claim that a pretty, blue-toothed fungus, Neoalbatrellus subcaeruleoporus, which is small and subtle and rarely seen or collected, is any more common or uncommon than it has ever been? And yet it gets a “Near Threatened” status. Perhaps it has always occurred in low numbers? The peppery little orange chanterelle, Cantharellus coccolabae, found in Florida, has an “Endangered” status with the IUCN, since it is a sand dwelling species along coastal Caribbean shorelines (boo, global warming, sea rise and tourist hotels!), and yet its host tree, which lives in the exact same areas, gets a “Least Concern” with the IUCN! Which one is it? Endangered or fine? Amanita novinupta, a common species in California, somehow received an official G-3 status (Vulnerable) despite claims within that very species description that it was a species of least concern! Catathelesma ventricosum, the North American species, is commonly found, and yet the Eurasian equivalent, C. imperiale has its G3 (Near Threatened) status shown, in a book on North American fungi. Why? It seems as though the authors were grasping at ways to use some of the “official” conservation statuses, regardless of whether they were from North America or even truly threatened! Who vetted these prior to publication?
As with most places on earth these days, save the habitat and you will save the fungi (and everything else). Detecting fungal DNA in high throughput sequencing doesn’t tell you anything about abundance or health of the mycelia … just that bits of that fungal DNA are in the environment/spore bank. Fungal surveys cannot tell you how abundant the fungi are underneath the ground, when those fungi may not fruit for years or even decades, and then only briefly when ground conditions are exactly right. Even with more people posting photographs of fungi to places like Mushroom Observer (MO) and iNaturalist (iNat), that doesn’t really tell us anything about population trends, just that more people are out there taking photographs.
As one more issue with the conservation category as used in species descriptions within this book, the use of the term “not uncommon” would be better served without the double negative. Perhaps merely “common” would do, or “somewhat common?”
Discussion of the medicinal use of micro-fungi (producers of penicillin and cyclosporine) is probably not a useful feature of this guide to identification of macro fungi, but more part of an attempt to convince the public that fungi are an important part of our world. We at NAMA need little convincing. Nor is a discussion of the use of neurotoxic macro-fungi for shamanic healing or PTSD treatment for veterans germane to mushroom ID. The efficacy of so-called medicinal fungi is also in dispute within our mycological community, but you wouldn’t know it to read the intro. Nascent technologies of myco-remediation and myco-filtration have not been shown to be effective or affordable in large-scale applications, and yet, it still gets mentioned without critique in this preface to the identification of fungi.
Jacob Kalichman, a well-respected mycologist in the North American amateur community, wrote up the species descriptions and provided a guide to the various orders discussed within this book (pgs. 690-697). He also broke with tradition and organized the book into these orders, rather than by mushroom shape, size and hymenium, as was used in the past. It certainly needed to be done, but it does not make it easier to use this book, especially by those who are not already well versed in fungal identification. It is however quite useful to flip through the various color-coded sections of fungal orders, and see just who is related to whom. The answers might surprise you!
There are no keys with which to gain entry to novice ID attempts, and the section called “How to Use this Book” was unfortunately left out of this first printing. At the very least, Audubon should make those pages available free somewhere online.
The use of icons to represent each of these orders is also a bit confusing. Several of them are only slightly differing ”blobs.” Pezizales, with its myriad cups, is represented by a vague morel shape. The Rhystismatales, which contain mostly tiny cups and discs, and spots on plants, is represented by capped and veiled mushrooms in a cluster! Phallales, the stinkhorns, have a simple capped mushroom with a straight stipe. And yet, so many of their shapes are highly distinctive. The Hypocreales, including many parasitic fungi, are represented with what looks to be a fat bolete! The actual Boletales are represented by a slender, somewhat boletoid fungus but with a prominant low partial veil! I don’t get it.
Audubon chose to leave out most information on fungal toxicity (with only a very brief paragraph by Roo Vandergrift) or edibility, and in fact takes pains to discourage people from foraging fungi. And yet, as we well know, the desire to eat these fungi as well as interest in their toxicity, is what draws most of us to this field, at least at first. It was an odd choice.
In the introductory identification pages, a sentence states “Gills, also called teeth or pores …” would have profited by using the term hymenium or fertile surface. No, gills are not teeth or pores, but they are all hymenial structures. And yes, those structures can be morphed into each other with evolution and gene expression, but I wouldn’t call them all gills. The word hymenium/fertile surface was added to the glossary of terms, so why not use it? Speaking of the glossary, a volva is just another term for the universal veil, and not merely the volval remnant at the base of certain amanitas. All amanita have volvas, but not all have basal volval remnants. This can confuse new mushroomers, attempting to identify an amanita with no obvious basal volva at all! In fact the glossary was oddly truncated to only two pages. Compare this to the five pages of glossary words given to the new Audubon bird guide, and yet, the fungi and their vocabulary terms are far less known.
A field guide or identification guide that purports to cover the entire continental United States will never be able to show enough species from one particular region to satisfy a serious hunter/identifier. At best, the author will select the most interesting, common or showy species, an engaging introduction to fungi as it were. In this case, Jacob did his best to mix things up between the Eastern and Western species, probably in the end pleasing almost no one! I read one reviewer on Amazon comment that Jacob has a Western bias! I did not find this to be so. Of course, the opposite could be said about Gary’s book. This is exactly why regional guides are much more valuable to regional hunters. There are only so many mushrooms that can fit into one book.
Gary complained that he was forced to make up common names for his guide, but also stated that it was easy enough to learn the latin names, and that latin was the preferred form amongst serious mycologists, both amateur and professional. Jacob appears to have embraced the iNat version of “keeping things simple” for the masses, and gladly made up a slew of brand new, not so common “common” names, like “Candlelight Vigil” for Multiclavula mucida (which perversely, I both love and hate). And why call the former Boletus satanas in North America (now Rubroboletus eastwoodiae) “Satan’s Bolete,” when it is really Alice Eastwood’s bolete?! Although Jacob approached the making up of new names with enthusiasm and creativity, I am sure that Audubon also mandated that he do so. And he seemed to look for common names already in use where possible, so kudos for that. The name changes in both latin and common are befuddling!
I share another reviewer’s concern that former latin names were not cited along with the new. With the current rate of latin name changes, it is very useful to know what it used to be called, at least in the recent past. As we know, all fungi have gone through many name changes over the centuries. See Index Fungorum if you don’t believe me!
Jacob wrote all of the species descriptions with an insider’s knowledge, no small feat, but the information given for each mushroom was not consistent, and sometimes not enough for good identifications. A distinctive odor might only be mentioned in the intro paragraph, but sometimes it isn’t mentioned at all. It should have been in the description of Agaricus xanthodermus. Knowing the taste of fungi also can help in identifications, but often was not given. It would have been nice to see standardized descriptions for each mushroom.
Spore print color is emphasized, but a white spore print is a worthless ID feature within the genus Amanita (and for species distinctions within other white-spored genera) … why not provide some useful spore data, too, on every example given? Although latex color was provided for most of the Lactarius sp., it was not given for the Western candy cap, Lactarius rubidus, even though a pale skim milk color, changing to almost clear, is a main feature for telling it apart from the myriad other orange, bright white-milked California Lactarius species!
Perhaps Audubon’s insistence upon including multiple and oft-times redundant photos with every species description interfered with Jacob’s ability to add in all of the relevant and important details for making good identifications?
How about all of those pretty photos, anyway? Audubon trumpeted the fact that this book has 2,900 photos (and I counted/estimated 965+ or – photographers!).
And what a bargain they were! The publishers/Audubon made an effort to only choose online photos that had a Creative Commons (CC) commercial license. This means that the photos can be used for free, even in a commercial publication, as long as certain criteria are met. Those criteria include citing the author, citing and linking to where the photo was first seen, and citing the license used. In a best case scenario, that photographer would also be contacted about the use of his or her photo, and perhaps offered financial compensation (often, a free book is given in the case of the use of photos for mushroom books. This has certainly been my experience.). What Audubon did in practice was to cite the photographers’ names (if known) or otherwise their screen names in the credits. Period. No attempt was made to contact them for a real name if a pseudonym had been used. No source for that photo was given. And there was no way to know who was associated with what photo and where, because page numbers weren’t given and photos weren’t labeled. It is also possible that a handful of folks who did not have the commercial CC license also had their photos used. At least, that is claimed by a few.
It is obvious that no one with knowledge of mycology chose and vetted these photos. If you are going to have multiple photos per species entry, at least attempt to show salient features! Leratiomyces ceres, a common species in California, had multiple cap shots, all with the typical orange color. How many examples do you really need? How useful it would have been to show the dramatic changes in gill coloration as they matured. I know those photos exist, because I created some of them. Photos appeared to be chosen for artistic rather than taxonomic merit. Amanitas were not shown in their entirety. Mushrooms with ridiculously long rooting stipes like Oudmansiella and Caulorhiza were not shown with their dramatic stipes illustrated. This despite the existence of an excellent photo of author Jacob with a typical Caulorhiza in hand! And finally, no one who knew fungi vetted the identification of all of those photos. Not all fungi on MO or iNat are accurately labeled. How else to explain the photo of the cap of Calbovista subsculpta on the Amanita magniverrucata page? Coltrichia perennis with a white agaric as its page header? Heliocybe sulcata with a photo of Coltrichia perennis? Amanita calyptroderma with an Amanita vernicoccora photo? You can play along at home; find your own photo errors!
Note: Jacob Kalichman had nothing to do with the selection or placement of these photos, nor the final editing of this book. It’s all on Audubon. And here’s another irony: the cover jacket photo was a commercial and pretty crappy stock photo by Stephen Morris Photography/Alamy. THAT one they did pay for. Sigh.
So, what did I think about this book, overall? It’s not useful as a field guide, it’s too heavy, and its scope both too broad (all of North America north of Mexico) and not detailed enough for regional use. It has no easy way for novices to identify their finds, no keys, no useful hints to finding the identity of that mushroom in your hand (that might be improved with the addition of the dropped “How to Use this book” page). It is very useful if you want to get a better feel for the modern placement of fungi by flipping through images associated with the various color-coded orders. The descriptions of the fungi covered are generally insightful, and the latin names up to date, at least from the date of publication! If someone knows nothing about fungi and wants to see a spectrum of things found all over the country while cozied up at home in a favorite arm chair, this book will provide an entry point. It is at best an introduction to some of the modern concepts of fungi, and that’s not nothing.
I do think that the treatment of the hundreds of photographers was disgraceful. Next time, use fewer, better, more illustrative photos, and give real credit, including page references and photo sources, to photographers. And let a mycologist select those photos, not an art director.
Debbie Viess © 2023
First published in The Mycophile Quarterly, Q3 2023
