Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain & Europe Volume 1. Third Edition

Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain & Europe, Volume 1 is an up to date and handsomely produced fungi guide, by well known mycologist Geoffrey Kibby. The author has taken the opportunity now that the second edition has sold out, to produce an updated third edition. There are no new species or pictures in this new edition and the changes are mostly limited to reclassification and naming, plus minor corrections (spelling, grammar etc).

Any field guide to the Basidiomycota necessarily involves selecting from thousands of species in Britain alone. Geoffrey here selects a combination of both commoner and more occasional or rare species, including many that are seldom if ever included in other field guides, some newly discovered and other striking European species not yet recorded in Britain.

The introduction to each section includes useful illustrative photos, and the 650 species accounts are illustrated with paintings, principally to highlight important characters that are sometimes difficult to ascertain from a photograph The book is also unique in illustrating microscopic features next to each painting.

Volume 1 features the non-agarics: Chanterelles, Boletes and their relatives, Russula & Lactarius, Club fungi, Stinkhorns, Puffballs, Polypores & Crust fungi, Earthstars and Toothed Fungi.

Volume 2  includes over a thousand agarics (gilled fungi).

Volume 3 is the second volume to deal with agarics and covers the following families: Agaricaceae (continued from volume 1), Psathyrellaceae, Mythicomycetaceae, Galeropsidaceae, Strophariaceae, Hymenogastraceae and Cortinariaceae

Volume 4 is due out in 2022 – families to be covered in volume 4: Bolbitaceae, Crepidotaceae, Inocybaceae, Tubariaceae, Macrocystidiaceae and Entolomataceae

Peter Marren, reviewing volume 1 in the October 2017 issue of British Wildlife Magazine, is fulsome in his praise and predicts that the book may turn out to be the best printed field guide in English that we shall ever see.