Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fungi of Coastal Northern California

This is an easy-to-use guide to mushrooms found on the northern California coast and inland areas. It covers mushrooms that are common, as well as some rare ones. Excellent, clear, full-color photos show the mushrooms in their native habitat. The photos show views of the mushrooms from multiple angles, cut in half, and some stained. The images show you the natural growth form and also a specimen flipped over so you can see the gills and stipe. This helps enormously with identification. The descriptions of each species are very thorough and, along with the photo, will help you identify anything you find in the woods. Each species description includes: cap, gills, stipe, flesh, odor, fruit body, tubes, pores, taste (when appropriate), spore deposit, partial veil, microscopy, ecology, KOH, edibility, misapplied name (if any). Some species have additional sections in the description, since they may have different features not seen in other mushroom types. The comments section in each species account gives further details that are important or of interest. It’s a very useful text and the photos will make identification of your finds easier. The first section of the book is a quick guide to help you pick out mushrooms by groups. From there, you refer to the appropriate section in the text to further narrow down your identification. The illustrations in the quick guide are also photos, and I found this helpful since drawings are often difficult to interpret. Since I live on the Far North Coast and love learning about mushrooms, this book will be a useful addition to my field guide collection. I hope that the publishers will offer a digital edition for the Kindle as well as the print version. I recommend it for anyone interested in nature, the outdoors, or mycology. Mushroom enthusiasts will love this book and it will get a lot of use on field trips!

Living in Northern California, this is the book we go to for all our mushroom questions. Beautiful photographs and wonderfully detailed, the guide is lovely. We reference it regularly and gift it often.

Love this book! It was super helpful when I first started getting into mushroom foraging. The photos, coupled with the descriptions, are amazingly detailed. Got a copy for my 7-year-old niece for Christmas and she was so excited to have her own mushroom book.

Love this book! Detailed descriptions and pictures.

The book came in with no damage, and I absolutely love it! It's got lots of pictures and useful information about mushrooms!

I've bought two copies of this book. One for myself, and then for a friend. For someone who is interested in mushrooms, this book is the Bible. It is easy to follow, and is very detailed in how to identify. I have yet to see a more comprehensive fungi identification book.

A must have reference! I have had this on pre-order for months and just got my copy. This the most up to date listing of west coast mushrooms, and includes current species names. The photography is excellent-- clear, crisp and color accurate photos with succinct information and descriptions. I can't wait until it rains to get out and use it! I give this book 4 stars not for it's content, but for the poor design decisions made by the publisher if this were to be used in the field: cover has a soft-touch rubbery coating that is already scuffed and is not very durable. Gloss would have been much better. And, unfortunately, the body text is way too light to be legible for us folks with older eyes, especially on a fall day in the woods-- they should have used a "medium" weight of the font vs a "book" weight. But still, I would not hesitate to buy this book!!!

My husband and I have several books of mushrooms for different places we spend time hiking and this is far and away the best guide we have found. The photos and illustrations are both beautiful and easy to understand, and it makes a big difference when identifying species to have a book so specific to that area, rather than find what you think is a match, only to find out it isn't found in your area. It also allows it to include more, rarer species since it's focused on a specific area / climate, rather than having to do a broad overview of, say, North America, and only being able to cover the most common varieties. Well-written and beautiful!