California Mushrooms: The Comprehensive Identification Guide
A Book Review
California Mushrooms: The Comprehensive Identification Guide
Dennis E. Desjardin, Michael G. Wood, and Frederick A. Stevens
Timber Press; August 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1604693539
When I first received my reviewer’s copy of this brand new guide to California fungi in the fall of 2014 (perhaps now a collectors item; more on this later), I will admit to being impressed, but certainly not surprised. The three authors of this volume, Dennis Desjardin, Michael Wood and Frederick Stevens, have been great good friends with each other for many years, and share a love for, as well as a great talent for mycology. Professor Desjardin received his mycological training under the late Dr. Harry Thiers, and continues in his fine mycological tradition at San Francisco State University (SFSU), teaching and training students and leading annual mycology trips to the Sierra Field Station in the spring, as well as expanding our mycological efforts and knowledge to overseas. Stevens and Wood have collaborated on the fine online field guide, "The Fungi of California," for over two decades. But this is a first book for the two of them, and their first collaboration with established author Desjardin.
Wood and Stevens are also fine photographers, and their photos make up the bulk of those depicted within these pages. Primary author Desjardin is responsible for the text, written in an easily understandable and fact–filled style, one that he has honed over many years of teaching at SFSU. Other members of the California mycological community were tapped for both specialist’s insight as well as photographs of fungi not photo documented by Wood and Stevens. The book is even better for the collaboration.
There are 650 species depicted by both photos and text, and 479 others are briefly described, providing an extensive but not exhaustive spectrum of interesting and common California fungi. Only those species with full descriptions are included in the keys, which means that just like for every other field guide currently available, you will eventually come upon a mushroom that is not included here. But that is a small criticism, and true of all other field guides as well.
Reading through my brand new volume of "California Mushrooms" was like flipping through a photo album of old friends: my California fungal friends that is, in all of their mushroomy glory. The book is organized with large color photos of the mushroom right along with the text, a useful format. Concise and well-written chapters on mushroom biology and ecology, current nomenclature and taxonomy, as well as delimiting our new understanding of mushroom morphology and phylogeny precedes and enlivens the many species descriptions. There is a nice section on "How to Identify Mushrooms," from proper collecting techniques to important fungal features to note during the ID process.
All three authors are not only practicing field mycologists but also avid mushroom hunters – and as such, they bring a wealth of personal experience to their book.
Mushroom edibility opinions in any field guide will vary from author to author and palate to palate. Some are determined by popular opinion, others by personal experience and preference. But not all edibility information is equally valid. I was surprised to read the authors list Boletus eastwoodiae, a handsome red-pored, bulbous-based bolete found in oak woodlands, as poisonous (in a brief sidebar on edible and poisonous CA mushrooms) and then again as "edible with long cooking" (via hearsay). And some of these edibility claims are merely a way to say "not poisonous," but hardly worth eating. I was delighted to see Desjardin list Amanita muscaria as unambiguously poisonous, despite the second author’s having touted its edibility after parboiling on his popular website, Mykoweb.
Author Mike Wood has had a long-standing interest in the genus Inocybe, and this is reflected in the abundance of Inocybe photos and descriptions. Dennis has built his career upon more delicate genera like Mycena and Marasmius. In collaboration with the work of his former graduate student, Brian Perry, these small and often colorful saprobic denizens of California are well represented, described and photographed.
Author Fred Stevens has long had a fascination with the genus Agaricus, and is in fact our acknowledged expert in this group here in California. Many interesting and little known Agaricus species are described and illustrated in "California Mushrooms." Surprisingly, many had latin nom. provs, taken from Rick Kerrigan’s still unpublished work on North American Agaricus. This is a bit unorthodox, but will certainly give this section a leg-up over other identification guides, once these names are actually published and come into usage.
Puffballs are another group of special interest to Stevens, and this section was no doubt also helped by his collaboration with Stephanie Jarvis, who recently obtained her Masters on California puffballs in Desjardin’s lab. At the start of the puffball section, there is an iconic photograph of the "Methuselah Puffball Ring" of Calvatia pachyderma, at Knowland Park in Oakland. This remarkable and fungally historic structure is over a hundred years old, and is sadly threatened by an Oakland Zoo expansion. By the time of the new publication date, it may well be gone, forever.
I found it particularly useful to have the new latin names for various genera of inky caps finally spelled out in print; up until this book, we have had to write the new names of these species in the margins of our old field guides! As most of you know, the genus Coprinus, typified by Coprinus comatus, was broken up into several new genera, once we realized that the group was polyphyletic. Our commonly encountered California inky caps can now be found in Coprinopsis, Coprinellus and Parasola, with only the Shaggy Mane, C. comatus and a few other species remaining in Coprinus.
Mushroom novices, looking to put names to their fungal finds, can begin with a simple pictorial key to mushroom body shapes. This then takes you to keys for various genera. The keys are simple to use, but have the same drawbacks as any other key, if you have either an unusual form or an undescribed mushroom. Considering that over 3,000 species of fungi are estimated to grow in California, that leaves you with the potential for quite a few unsolved mysteries!
Mushroom taxonomy and nomenclature are constantly evolving, and one must eventually just send ones book to the printer. Missing the cut were the many new species of Butyriboletus or butter boletes, like the former Boletus now Butyriboletus regius and B. abietinus (now Bu. abietinus). Also no longer an accepted North American (NA) species is Lactarius deliciosus, the former NA varieties of which have been elevated to species level. Lactarius deliciosus "varieties" (aka cryptic species), are discussed in the L. deliciosus comments.
Not surprisingly, the key to Mycena species is extensive and excellent, using easily perceived characters like color and the presence or absence of latex and fruiting substrate, and whether the mushrooms have marginate (colored) gill edges. Budding mycenologists need to carry a hand-lens!
Psilocybe, an ever popular genus here in California and especially in the S.F. Bay Area, are given the short shrift, with only P. cyanescens described and two other woodchip-dwelling Psilocybe sp. mentioned. No word on those famous cow pie pasture fruiters, Psilocybe semilanceata, so commonly collected in Humboldt County, the senior author’s boyhood home.
Amanitas are given a rather cursory treatment, with much incomplete information and even incorrect information. Since amanitas contain some of the most important of our California mushrooms relative to public health, these omissions are perplexing. The introduced Amanita phalloides, a mushroom that kills unwary foragers in CA on a regular basis, and which is the only known instance of an invasive mycorrhizal mushroom in NA, has expanded its host trees from live oak and cork oak to both tan oak and pine, and now occurs in places here in CA where it never grew before, including the wildly popular mushroom hunting grounds of Salt Point State Park on the Sonoma Coast. This information has been available for years, and should have been included in this book, as a public service.
Although a Cortinarius expert recently published a new name for a familiar spring species of amanita: Amanita vernicoccora, or the Spring Coccora, that didn’t mean that we should throw out all of the rest of our knowledge of this species, obtained over many decades. Although Bojantchev perhaps has only found it with black oak in the Sierra, many others have found it with pine in the Sierras, and a variety of hardwoods coastally. It is also commonly found with a white cap, not merely a yellow one. None of this information was included. Should we not build upon our knowledge, not repeat fallacies or worse, ignore what is already known? I was glad to see that Desjardin acknowledged that the range for vernicoccora extended out of California and up into the PNW, another fact that was ignored in the Bojantchev paper.
"California Mushrooms" claims that our Sierran Amanita aprica is not the same as the A. aprica first named from the Pacific Northwest, but that is not in fact true.
They are both DNA identical, and both have a similar range of colors, from bright day-glo yellow to orange. Color morphs of amanitas like the commonly encountered white phase Amanita velosa and yellow-capped Amanita augusta and white Amanita muscaria, as well as pure white forms of A. vernicoccora were left unmentioned. The fall coccora, Amanita calyptroderma, a popular edible species here in CA, also has many color morphs, including a dark brown and a metallic copper and very rarely, white. None of these colors are mentioned, although many people collect grisettes like velosa and various Caesar’s amanitas for the table.
Amanita protecta, one of our endemic grisettes, has apparently been found by Fred Stevens under pine, most collectors find it under live oak, and there has even been recent documentation of it growing in pure stands of willow. Why not gather data from more than one source, and present the broader perspective? As to its edibility, yes, it is not poisonous (no grisettes are) but it frankly tastes awful. I have eaten it, but have no desire to repeat the experience.
Claims are made that the European species Amanita vaginata, one of many barely distinguishable grisettes, occurs here in California, which is highly unlikely, and disputed by most amanita experts. We have plenty of unnamed grisette species in California; what we call "vaginata" is one of them.
Finally, despite the great debt owed to myco-mentor Harry Thiers, and in fact the book title itself is an echo of Thiers’ 1984 publication, "California Mushrooms: A Field Guide to Boletes," suggesting as a further reference for deeper Amanita information the very out of date Amanita section written by Thiers in the "Agaricales of California" will not in fact provide new or better information for this sadly lacking section.
I was also puzzled by the authors’ selection of Morchella species that they chose to describe and illustrate. There is no question that recent NA morel names have been confusing, owing to practically simultaneous publications from France and the USA. But if so, why use as your few illustrated species morels that simply cannot be told apart in hand, and ignore the few good and recognizable species that we do have here, like M. snyderi and M. tomentosa? Unlike as stated within "California Mushrooms," the new name for our widespread North American blonde morel is not esculentoides but M. americana. Morchella rufobrunnea, the wood chip morel, is not a "blonde morel," nor representative of the esculenta clade, although it is pale. The book contains a photo of M. americana by Hugh Smith, mislabeled as rufobrunnea.
But none of this is easy. It might have been helpful if the authors had consulted with Michael Beug, who wrote a recent fine book on the "Ascomycete Fungi of North America," and spent many long hours untangling morel names, although even his up to date research and name conclusions have been modified with new genetic data presented in a recent Mycologia paper, a collaboration between NA and French mycologists and geneticists.
If you are confused by the new NA morel names, you are not alone. I am afraid that this new book will not be much help. But hey, latin names are not important in the fry pan, once you can identify a morel to genus. Like Desjardin stated at a recent talk on his new book, acknowledging the difficulties of sorting out these new names: regardless of latin name, all morels are edible!
These issues aside, on the whole, I like this book very much. It will serve as an excellent in-home reference, or perhaps a back-at-camp reference, but certainly not an in-the-field guide proper. Weighing in at four and a half pounds, this extensive and colorful treatment of California mushrooms makes David Arora’s "Mushrooms Demystified" feel like a featherweight! As to my allusion to a "collectors item" ~ apparently the entire first run of this book was destroyed by the publisher when the authors decided that some of their photos were "too dark" and "too contrasty." The new release date for “California Mushrooms: the Comprehensive Identification Guide” is now June 2015, but even the book in its perhaps less than perfect, original state is still beautiful. It will certainly prove to be a useful identification volume for any mycological library, and especially for California and other western mushroom hunters and identifiers.
Nice job, fellas.
Debbie Viess © 2015
Editor's Note: This review first appeared in Mushroom, The Journal of Wild Mushrooming, Issue 113, Vol.31, No.2-3, Spring-Summer 2015. The book was released by Timber Press on August 12, 2015.
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