Mushrooms and Friends

outings / gallery / book / articles / for sale / links

Mushrooms

• No Taste Like Home - the best wild foods programs in the known universe
• Asheville Mushroom Club listserve - submit your ID requests here so that many experts can weigh in, others can learn from it, and we can all have a sense of what's fruiting. Include several good photos, top and bottom, and the location.
• Deep Woods Mushrooms - grow your own! Local shiitake grower Greg Carter will show you how.
• Mushroom Mountain - South Carolina-based, lots of resources on cultivation and more.
• "Deaths Of 550,000 Confirm Which Mushrooms Are Okay To Eat" – finally some recognition!

• Fungi on BBC's "Planet Earth" – The coolest mushroom video ever! The link won't stay live, so search on those terms or "cordyceps."
• Cryptogams in Depth- Cool 3-D pictures of fungi and more. No funny glasses required!

• The fastest living thing on the planet is... Another very cool video, about Pilobilus (like the dance troop). What it doesn't mention is that, if I'm not mistaken, this fungus also has incredibly good aim, necessary if you're shooting from deep down in what the video calls "poo"...
• Rogers Mushrooms – Basically an online combination of Roger Phillips' field guides plus a handy search form (called "Easy Key"). This form is not as comprehensive as Matchmaker (see below) but the site covers all of North America and the U.K.Several images for each mushroom, even recipes.
• Matchmaker – fantastic database of over 2500 mushrooms of the North American Pacific Northwest. Useful for any location for identification to genus. Still no substitute for a human being, but available on CD basically for free!
• MycoKey – Thomas Læssøe & Jens H. Petersens website. Has another interesting interactive database of 1150 Northern European species.
• Mycology Resources on the Net – A huge index of everything related to mycology
• Mykoweb – Great links page and big database of California mushrooms
• The Vancouver Mycological Society – Another great links page
• Key to Gilled Mushrooms – Great identification learning tool that shows how each step narrows down the possibilities.
• Mushroom Expert.com – Lots of great, very detailed information on mushroom ID and taxonomic conondrums by Michael Kuo. Even has an ID guide to trees.
• Tom Volk's Fungi – Chock-full of fungus
• Mushroom, The Journal – The magazine for amateur mycologists focusing on North America. Has great set of FAQ pages, great old-timey drawings, and a huge myco-scientific name dictionary.
• Bruce Kendrik's website – Has twenty chapters of his textbook The Fifth Kingdom free online.
• The Sonoma County Mycological Association (SOMA) – A lengthy list of books and other resources, tips on how to preserve mushrooms, a list of edibles for Northern California, and more from one of the biggest mushroom clubs in the country.
• The North American Mycological Society – The association for amateur mycologists in N.A. Has a listing of local clubs and a gallery of beautiful photos.
• Asheville Mushroom Club – My fungal "peeps"
• The Fascinating World of Fungi – Introduction to mushrooms
• Existential Mushrooms: The Middle Kingdom of Chicago Wilderness – Nice introductory article
• Fungi Images on the Net – Searchable index of over 3,500 pictures
• fungiphoto.com – Beautiful mushroom photos and artistic collages by Taylor Lockwood, great slide show DVD and great introduction to mushroom identification DVD.
• Fungi Perfecti – Paul Stametz's mushroom cultivation and mycoremediation website
• Sorting the Names of Fungi – Mushrooms names in many languages; a few international links (outdated).
• The Truffle Book – Charming and well-informed overview of one of the world's most expensive foods. Just enough detail to be comprehensive yet interesting.
• Erowid – For all things psychadelic

Other Wild Foods

• Living Systems Design - incorporate mushrooms and other wild edibles into your landscaping with No Taste Like Home MC Zev Friedman.
• Wild Abundance – "Classes, consultations, crafts, and installations to help you tap into nature's bounty."
• Foraging Asheville – My listserve for local wild & feral food news, questions, and discussion.
• Firefly Gathering – Wild foods and ancient skills in a beautiful setting.
• Plants and Healers – Former globe-trotter and paradigm-shifter Frank Cook's website. Inspiring wild food & medicine teacher who literally walked his talk. Frank made me look like I eat at SONIC.
• Baby Got Bugs - Warning: this stuck in my head for months.
• "Bug Mac' and lovely 'grub,' food of the future,” nice article on insect-eating. Favorite line: "the best way to start is to try it once."
• "Economics of Wild Strawberries," Euell Gibbons, from Stalking the Wild Asparagus

www.alanmuskat.com