The best books about mushrooms
Even experienced mushroom pickers sometimes need tips, and even more so for beginners. How to properly equip yourself for mushroom hunting? How not to confuse edible and dangerous mushrooms? When and where can you expect the biggest mushroom catch? How to properly process the collected wealth and prepare it correctly: dry it, preserve it, or simply cook soup. Books about mushrooms with pictures will tell you about these and other useful things.
We offer you a list of the best of them:
Lydia Garibova “Mushrooms. 250 types of edible, poisonous and medicinal mushrooms" The book will be a good helper when collecting mushrooms. High-quality illustrations and an accurate description of each species will allow the mushroom picker to choose only edible and medicinal species without a doubt. The author devoted an entire section to growing mushrooms on her site and methods of preserving them.
Renate Volk, Friedhelm Volk “All about mushrooms. Illustrated reference book" Bright, colorful, high-quality printing of the book, as well as structured and well-researched material, distinguish this book from other reference books. All types of mushrooms are divided into sections. Provides practical information on edible mushrooms and their poisonous counterparts.
Mikhail Vishnevsky “Handbook for a beginning mushroom picker” The book is a reference book for any beginning mushroom picker. An accurate and concise description of each mushroom with illustrations is given. The author shares the secrets of harvesting and storing the harvest, and also offers proven recipes for cooking.
Nikolay Zvonarev “Mushrooms. We collect, grow, prepare." The book is filled with everyday advice about mushrooms: how not to make a mistake in choosing mushrooms, how to grow them and how to process them, so that even in winter there will be champignons, milk mushrooms and others on the table. The author has been growing mushrooms on his plot for many years, so in this book he shares his achievements and useful experiences.
Pelle Jansen “All about Mushrooms” The book impresses with the collected material about 600 species of mushrooms. The author did not limit himself only to the well-known ones, but offered the reader a huge selection of mushrooms from almost all over the world. Each species has photo illustrations and an interesting description that helps you understand how to distinguish poisonous mushrooms from edible ones.
Team of authors “Mushrooms in the forest and in the kitchen” If picking mushrooms is no longer a painful guessing game between “edible and inedible”, then this book is for experienced mushroom pickers. It has concise information on determining the nutritional value of each type, focusing on preparation and storage. Here are collected recipes for appetizers, first and second courses that reveal the taste and characteristics of mushrooms.
Anna Romanova, Alla Bulatova “Mushrooms. Illustrated guide to collection, processing, storage" Good practical advice on the main stages of working with mushrooms: collection, storage, preparation. Beginners and experienced mushroom pickers will gain interesting information about the types of mushrooms, their distinctive features, and the possibility of preparing delicious and simple dishes. The book has 350 drawings, illustrations, photographs.
Mikhail Vishnevsky “The most collected edible mushrooms that have poisonous or inedible counterparts. Comparative tables" To collect mushrooms, you need not only desire, but also deep knowledge in this area. Poisonous mushrooms often disguise themselves as edible ones, having doubles. The book is designed to protect novice mushroom pickers from making mistakes during picking. Comparative tables help make the material more visual and understandable.
Tatyana Ilyina “Mushrooms. Illustrated encyclopedia. Collecting and preparing” The book contains all the commonly encountered types of mushrooms with their characteristics and photographs. Complete information is given on each mushroom and its distinctive features from its poisonous counterpart. The author has collected a huge number of recipes that will allow you to quickly and easily make winter preparations.
Vadim Archer “Mushroom Encyclopedia” The book contains theoretical knowledge on mushrooms and their processing. She can answer almost any question that interests a mushroom picker. There are descriptions of all mushrooms, complete characteristics and a comparative analysis of species. The mistakes of beginners are considered and useful tips are given to experienced mushroom pickers.
Sergey Afonkin “Medicinal Mushrooms” The book is distinguished by clearly structured information on medicinal mushrooms. Each page is devoted to one species with a full description, illustration, place and time of collection, as well as diseases that this mushroom relieves with recipes for infusions.
Fedor Karpov “Mushrooms of the European part of Russia” The book outperforms its counterparts in its pocket size. Having a small volume, it fully corresponds to a small encyclopedia, where there is a lot of useful information about mushrooms, their properties, appearance, time and places of collection. A description of poisonous mushrooms is given with detailed illustrations.
Mikhail Vishnevsky “Mushrooms” The publication will help you quickly and correctly identify mushrooms by their appearance. A very accurate and succinct description of each species with photographs and illustrations. Here are all the mushrooms (edible and poisonous) that can be found in our country.
Maxim Zhmakin “Breeding and growing mushrooms” Growing mushrooms in the garden has not been something surprising for a long time. Modern technologies make it possible to create a mycelium on your site in a short time. This book will be a good helper with valuable material and tips for growing mushrooms at home.
Team of authors “Edible mushrooms and their inedible counterparts. Mushroom Picker's Pocket Guide" If you don’t have enough experience in picking mushrooms, then a pocket encyclopedia book will come to the rescue. It will help you find your way while walking through the forest, and its compact size will not cause any inconvenience. The book has illustrations and descriptions of all commonly encountered mushrooms - from edible to poisonous.
Irina Filippova “Health in a Basket” Since ancient times, mushrooms have been considered a folk remedy in the fight against many diseases. They treat obesity, psoriasis, colds and other diseases. The book contains many recipes that the author uses himself and recommends to loved ones. All recipes are very easy to create and use.
Tatyana Ilyina “Mushroom palette. Pocket guide-identifier” A book whose purpose is to help inexperienced mushroom pickers understand the forest and choose only the “right” mushrooms. The small format contains all the necessary, brief information with illustrations and descriptions of the types of edible mushrooms.
Tatyana Suvorova “A Brief Encyclopedia of Mushrooms” The book describes the most popular edible and medicinal mushrooms. The reader is offered a complete description of each species, its beneficial properties and folk recipes for diseases. There is an interesting section related to cooking, where recipes are offered for every taste.
Nadezhda Strogova “Kombucha against 100 diseases” Kombucha has been used as a folk remedy for many generations. There are many diseases that can be successfully cured with its infusion. The book contains recipes that have been tested over the years, both for diseases and for their prevention.
Maxim Bulle “Mushroom Primer” The book will be of interest to all mushroom pickers. The material is presented in an accessible way, with many useful facts and tips on collecting, cooking and storing. Mushrooms are described as both edible and poisonous. There is a section with medicinal mushrooms, which will be useful to anyone who practices traditional medicine.
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Chapter 1. What you need to know to be treated with mushrooms
The first and most important thing is to know and love mushrooms well. First of all, know.
To do this, it is not enough to look at the picture once and immediately run to look for similar mushrooms in your forest.
There are jokes - someone finds shiitake
(a mushroom that grows
exclusively
in the Far East, China and Japan) on a linden tree stump in the Moscow region.
Someone a larch sponge
(tinder fungus) on a birch tree in Pskov, although the name of the tinder fungus speaks for itself - it is
larch sponge,
therefore, it grows only on larch trees, in Siberia and Altai. Veselka is always confused either with strings and morels, or with the canine mutinus. It’s okay to be confused - but our fearless people quickly make tinctures from these supposedly familiar mushrooms and begin to heal! Therefore, the first rule: if you don’t know or are not completely sure, DON’T DO IT! It is better and easier to order these mushrooms in the form of ready-made preparations in ours.
This is the first, but there is also a second, and this is an unpleasant moment. People don’t really rely on themselves to know mushrooms, but they firmly believe in “healers” who send herbs and mushrooms. Recently the newspaper “Mushroom Pharmacy” published the following article:
About the fun... with sadness
This is the letter we received:
“Dear editors! Send me Veselka seeds. I have a nice garden, I will grow it and send it to people. Because the pension is small, you have to work hard...
Pensioner T.,
Moscow region."
And one more thing after:
“Write in more detail about the properties of the fun and send more photos of it. In the summer I will look for it, dry it and send it to everyone in need. There is no work at all in our village...
Resident of the village of Ivanteevka.”
And at the same time the following letters arrive:
“We saw an advertisement in the newspaper - the healer Vasiliev from Samara is sending everyone a fungus for tinctures. And the price is right - 100 rubles. (yours is more expensive). Ordered. A bag arrived, and in it were three stems with a red cap. And the smell is very stinky. My husband and I had doubts - let’s look at your newspaper. And they saw that it was a completely different mushroom - mutinus canis. We sent him a letter - and that’s it, no answer, no hello...
Ekaterina,
Tolyatti".
“A woman from Pskov, who calls herself a doctor and healer, sent us a collection of medicinal mushrooms, which, as she indicated, contains veselka, larch sponge, meitake and shiitake. We are mushroom pickers, and we also read your newspaper regularly, so we immediately realized that there was no trace of any of the declared mushrooms - they were dried... russulas.
And this fee cost us 360 rubles...
Kostin,
SPb."
“I want to warn everyone against the scammer I. Razumov, who advertises in newspapers and offers everyone to send Brazilian agaric powder for only 80 rubles. I bought it so cheaply and got a whole bag of sawdust.
Odineev Viktor Arkadevich,
Moscow".
“I sent 460 rubles. to the address of the healer Novik from Novgorod indicated in the newspaper, so that they would send me Veselka mushroom powder for the entire course. And no matter how much I send there letters with a receipt inside, no one answers...
Kraevsky I. O.,
SPb."
What can you say about this? A small pension for both. Some want to increase their earnings at the expense of others, and those willingly send money to scammers, that is, they themselves want to be deceived? The first want to make money, and the second want to save.
How many times have we explained that free cheese only comes in a mousetrap? And there is also an English proverb: “We are not rich enough to buy cheap things.”
Veselka is a very rare mushroom, it is difficult to find and even more difficult to dry. Its properties are unique. This mushroom can't be cheap. And if it’s cheap, that’s a reason to think about it.
“There was such a case,” says A. Razin, a technologist at Shiitake LLC, which produces products based on the Veselka mushroom, “a certain man brought 10 kg of dried Veselka. The first analysis showed a wild (!) excess of cadmium there - 56 times! It was probably collected in an area very contaminated with heavy metals. Naturally, we refused the party. And then they found out that he made a tincture from this powder and quickly sold it in Ukraine... His conscience did not stop him..."
And here at the editorial office we were surprised - why don’t people buy analgin, for example, from their hands, but go to the pharmacy for it. But how great it would be to advertise: “A hereditary healer sells real analgin three times cheaper than in a pharmacy...” Would anyone really buy such an advertisement? And mushrooms, herbs, and tinctures are easily ordered. And doubts do not visit them: was it correct to send them, for example, hemlock, or aconite, or veselka? And where is the guarantee that these same “healers” know what it is, and are not just concerned about supplementing their pension?
I won’t give any more advice - it’s useless. The main thing is to know for sure: the salvation of the sick is the work of the sick themselves, and the advice of professionals will never be superfluous.
