Has anyone seen Fungi of Temperate Europe (sept 2019) by Thomas Laessoe supposed to be very good.
Does look gorgeous
https://www.summerfieldbooks.com/fungi-of-temperate-europe.-2-volumes.~6911
F’book reviews https://www.facebook.com/FungiTempEu/
I do hope you can put it to good use in iSpot
If I had a copy I might be able to, will see if it makes it to Christmas list
Hi all.
Sorry to join the thread so late.
One of our group has it (or should I say, THEM) and they were on hand at a foray/presentation of finds a while back.
Very luxurious coffee table books, glossy and pleasing to the eye - albeit completely inappropriate for field use. You’d probably need plus-sized shelving too.
I was very wary of giving them a good leafing lest I left any grubby fingerprints! I did turn a few pages however, and I’m afraid my underwhelmed impression was there was too much emphasis on pretty pictures/presentation (though only 1 photo per species if memory serves) at the expense of details/descriptions etc.
I thought afterwards that I should have checked the index for rare but drab species to see how comprehensive they were.
Sorry to sound like a grumpy old dissenter!
They are undeniably beautiful and £60 did seem a very reasonable price for the pair. Best price i’ve seen lately is £70 (WHSmiths).
Of course, it all depends on what you want from a book and i’d be interested to hear others’ thoughts.
Personally, i’d like to see the bouncing lovechild of a Phillips-Buczaki coupling delivered to the shelves - the photographic layout/direction clearly depicting a range of specimens that distinguishes the former’s Pan bestseller, complimented (and potentiated) by the helpful text and much more expansive range of species that characterises the latter on Collins.
If an additional in situ photo for each species could be thrown in then all the better.
And there I was complaining ’Fungi Of Temperate Europe’ is unwieldy…
Mike, did Santa oblige and if so what do you think?
I got Geoffrey Kibby’s ’The Genus Agaricus In Britain‘ for Christmas and I’m delighted with it. With it’s cheap as chips A4 card cover it feels more like a brochure than a book, but the user friendly keys, generous text and well considered general ‘pitch’ really delivers I thought. There’s loads of information/pics and every UK species (at least by the author’s well-reasoned definitions) is included plus a few more ‘not yet’ found here’ bringing he total covered to 61. Excellent book for all levels of reader, very accessible.
Cheers
Ben
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Nice, thanks Ben
I found a few comments by Andy Overall in my Project (you’ll know the one). I had not encounteted him before. He did not stay long in iSpot https://www.nhbs.com/fungi-mushrooms-toadstools-of-parks-gardens-heaths-and-woodlands-book?bkfno=238850&ca_id=1495&gclid=Cj0KCQiAmsrxBRDaARIsANyiD1pfEGKhrQCB8eLMhChPkMu_HfQVKzy0BBVEiNpBp2wosIf3VqwL4VMaAqeLEALw_wcB
Santa did not oblige. Sounds a bit like the big set of conifer books I got a few years ago, they look fantastic and are huge and I thought I might use them extensively but they would not fit on any bookshelf so vanished into long-term storage and used the internet for conifer identification instead.
Have you set up an Agaricus project to check through the ispot ones as I suspect a number may have somewhat dubious ID. Some of them have very interesting smells although not sure how good that is for identification.
I have them and am very pleased with them as an addition to other books I already have. They include smaller species that other books don’t cover. Also useful to have another source of illustrations as fungi vary so much in appearance that a single photo is often not all that much help. They are very heavy and need a fair bit of space to open, but I’m glad I got them.
Have you tried identifying any of the
items in this project with the book and its keys. Especially the small brown things.
That project often contains fungi which other books struggle with for one reason or another e.g. the ispot image is not very good but in other cases the other books may simply not have an illustration of that species.
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