2025 Nonfiction Challenge #5

Field Notes from a Fungi Forager by Ashley Rodriguez

Illustrated by Libby England

Published: October 2024

Summary from Goodreads:

This gorgeously illustrated compendium is a love letter to mushrooms—and to the Pacific Northwest.

From evergreen forests shrouded in mist to the urban backyards of Seattle, mushrooms are everywhere in the Pacific Northwest if you know how to look. Here, forager-chef and forest therapy guide Ashley Rodriguez provides an evocative and personal survey of 50 of the most fantastic mushrooms to be found in the region. This book includes the famous Morchella (morel) and Cantharellus (chanterelle) as well as lesser-known species, like the blueish purple Clitocybe nuda (wood blewit) which smells like frozen orange juice, and Hydnellum peckii (Bleeding tooth fungus), which oozes brilliant red droplets that are widely used as a natural dye. Through the lens of these humble fungi, the interconnectedness of all living things comes into focus.

Here you’ll find:
An introduction to mushrooms in the Northwest landscape.
Best practices for mushroom foraging and appreciation.
50 mushroom profiles, includes information about each mushroom’s appearance (plus scientific illustrations of each species), what distinguishes them from other species, how they have been used throughout different cultures and lore, and personal field notes from the forest floor.
The most prized edible species are paired with mouthwatering sidebars about ways to use that mushroom in the kitchen.
Infused with a forager-chef’s love of edible mushrooms as well as the reverence of an eco-spiritual guide, this fully illustrated book is as much a treat to read as is to look at.

Confession:

Well that summary just about sums up everything I was going to say about this beautifully illustrated and well written book about mushrooms. I have never enjoyed eating mushrooms, but her descriptions on how she prepares them made me want to maybe giving them a chance. But my lack of enthusiasm for eating them didn’t hinder my enjoyment of this book. I have a purely scientific and esthetic fascination with mushrooms. I love spotting them in the wild and I’m fascinated by all of the different varieties that I can find in just one walk around my neighborhood.

This book is not meant to be a field guide to identifying mushrooms, and I really appreciated how much the author cautioned not using it that way. The majority of the mushrooms she describes are edible, but some are not and there are a lot that look almost identical and could cause serious harm if you are wrong. She highly recommends that you learn to forage mushrooms with experts before venturing out on your own.

The book starts out with some facts and information about fungi and mushrooms. I found this section very well written and very accessible to lay people who know very little about the topic. It then goes into more detail about the different species and how to identify them. The accompanying illustrations are beautiful and I spent minutes just looking at those after reading about the mushrooms. I also enjoyed the little anecdotes that she included in her descriptions about times that she has found a certain type of mushroom and how she prepared them or used them in her cooking.

Although this book is specifically about mushrooms and fungi found here in the Pacific Northwest, many of these species are found elsewhere. You can certainly enjoy this book no matter where you live, mostly just because of the beautiful illustrations, but also for the culinary aspects of the book.