Wild Mushrooming

Longlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2022: Illustrated Non-Fiction

Longlisted for the ABIA Book Awards 2022: Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year

Fungi are diverse, delicious and sometimes deadly. With interest in foraging for wild food on the rise, learning to accurately identify fungi reduces both poisoning risk to humans and harm to the environment. This extensively illustrated guide takes a ‘slow mushrooming’ approach providing the information to correctly identify a few edible species thoroughly, rather than many superficially.

Wild Mushrooming: A Guide for Foragers melds scientific and cultural knowledge with stunning photography to present a new way of looking at fungi. It models ‘ecological foraging’ an approach based on care, conservation and a deep understanding of ecosystem dynamics. Sections on where, when and how to find fungi guide the forager in the identification of 10 edible species. Diagnostic information on toxic fungi and lookalike species helps to differentiate the desirable from the deadly. Wild Mushrooming then takes us into the kitchen with cooking techniques and 29 recipes from a variety of cuisines that can be adapted for both foraged and cultivated fungi. Developing the skills to find fungi requires slowness, not speed. This guide provides the necessary information for the safe collection of fungi, and is essential reading for fungus enthusiasts, ecologists, conservationists, medical professionals and anyone interested in the natural world.

Author Biography

Alison Pouliot is an ecologist and environmental photographer with a focus on fungi. She is active in Australian and international fungal conservation and her writing and images appear in both academic and popular literature. Alison’s fungus forays, which she conducts across both hemispheres, attract a range of people from foragers and philosophers to rangers and traditional owners. She is also the photographer and author of The Allure of Fungi (2018). Tom May is a mycologist who has spent more than four decades getting to know Australian fungi. He has published widely on fungal taxonomy, ecology and conservation in scientific and popular literature, including checklists of Australian fungi and a key to genera of Australian mushrooms (FunKey). He is active in international mycological groups such as the Nomenclature Committee for Fungi and in community natural history organisations, founding Fungimap in 1995. He was awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion in 2014.