From one of the region's foremost mushroom hunters – Walter Sturgeon – comes a long-overdue field guide to finding and identifying the mushrooms and fleshy fungi found in the Appalachian mountains from Canada to Georgia. Edibility and toxicity, habitat, ecology, and detailed diagnostic features of the disparate forms they take throughout their life cycles are all included, enabling the reader to identify species without the use of a microscope or chemicals.
Appalachian Mushrooms is unparalleled in its accuracy and currency, from its detailed photographs to descriptions based on the most advanced classification information available, including recent DNA studies that have upended some mushrooms' previously accepted taxonomies. Sturgeon celebrates over 400 species in all their diversity, beauty, and scientific interest, going beyond the expected specimens to include uncommon ones and those that are indigenous to the Appalachian region.
Appalachian Mushrooms is destined to be an indispensable authority on the subject for everyone from beginning hobbyists to trained experts, throughout Appalachia and beyond.
Walter Sturgeon is a field mycologist with over 40 years of experience studying and identifying mushrooms. His photos of mushroom and fungi, some award-winning, can be seen in numerous mushroom field guide publications, three of which he co-authored. One of these, Mushrooms of the Northeast, was awarded the best field guide of 2016 by the National Outdoor Writers Association
"A significant contribution [...] because the photos are the very best I have ever seen in an American field guide, this book will find readers and users well beyond the limits of its geographic range. Many of these mushrooms are not restricted to the Appalachians, and it will be welcome resource for those outside this area to identify the mushrooms in their own region."
– Gary Lincoff, author of the National Audubon Society's Field Guide to North American Mushrooms and president emeritus, North American Mycological Association
"This may well be the most accurate guide I have seen. Appalachian Mushrooms is unquestionably the work of someone who has spent a lifetime studying and mastering identification of the mushrooms that occur here. It is the most current and up-to-date book on the fungi of Appalachia."
– John Plischke, author of Good Mushroom Bad Mushroom