My first illustrated mushroom field guide and I'm coming to like it quite a bit. Like most mushroom books geared to ID, there are keys to follow to lead you to a suspect. Unlike many of those, this doesn't use a dichotomous key, but rather a chart that looks much like a target. You start in the middle with the gill color and move to the outer rings through, gill attachment, cap color and size, and finally stipe color and size. Relative sizes are given at the beginning of the book so you know what is a medium sized stalk versus a small one, etc. While it doesn't work every time, it works fairly well and a few tries got me to the right ballpark for my particular mushroom. It makes a nice change from the reliance on spore color because who goes to the trouble to make spore prints? As a nature photographer it's a pain for me to collect because I'm already lugging a bunch of gear.

As I said, every mushroom ID book has its strengths and weaknesses and unfortunately I think they missed an obvious key identifier that could have been incorporated fairly easily - where the mushroom is fruiting. Other books I use note this in the descriptions, but not this one, and it's puzzling.

While reading about the Russula family I came across this absolute gem -

The group of mushrooms called Brittlegills (Russula) is one of the most speciose groups of mushrooms worldwide. They are important in many forest ecosystems of the world. They are also incredibly hard to identify for amateurs and professionals alike, with or without microscopes. So as you study these pages and others that have Brittlegills, make your best guess and don’t worry about the exact species name. If you really want to worry about the species of Brittlegills, seek out one of two people in the entire world who are qualified to help you study Russulas so that you can start a graduate program in mycological systematics, and the rest of us will thank you for years to come.

OMG - nerdy fungi humor. Priceless. ( )