Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and Ireland - Blacks Nature Guides

Whilst this book is out of print, the canny shopper can still grab it for a couple of quid. I had my copy for over a decade before giving it to a friend to use… we all know how that goes. Last year, I picked up another copy for £2 from an online second-hand bookshop. Handily, it had come from a library, so it still had the vinyl cover on that libraries often use! They do get listed for a lot more, but with a bit of patience, one can still be found dirt cheap.

A true field guide, there is enough information on about 360 species of fungi found in the UK to get you started. Divided into fungi with pores, fungi with gills, and other fungi, each of these is then arranged by spore colour and gill attachment. The latter arrangement is my only niggle. Whilst the divisions of pores/gills/other are colour-tabbed for really quick access to those pages, the spore colour/gill attachment section isn’t. It’s not a real issue, as there’s a reference on the front and back covers to those pages, but it’s something that could have been easily included and made accessing those pages even easier.