About the Book
California is one of the most ecologically rich and diverse regions of North America, and home to thousands of species of mushrooms. In California Mushrooms, mycologists Dennis Desjardin, Michael Wood, and Fred Stevens cover over 1100 of them, with detailed profiles of 650 species. Each profile includes information on macro- and micromorphology, habitat, edibility, and comparisons with closely related species and potential look-alikes. Although the focus of the book is on mushrooms of California, over 90% of the species treated occur elsewhere, making the book useful throughout western North America.
California Mushrooms provides information on when and where to find mushrooms; guidelines on how to collect and identify them; and keys to species. It also has overviews of nomenclature and taxonomy, morphology and phylogeny, fungal ecology, biology of mushrooms, and mushroom toxins. This complete reference covers everything necessary for the mushroom hunter to accurately identify the mushrooms of this region.
