Table Of ContentRoyal BC Museum Handbook
MUSHROOMS
OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
ANDY MACKINNON AND KEM LUTHER
VICTORIA, CANADA
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 33 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
Also from the Royal BC Museum
Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples
by Nancy J. Turner
Food Plants of Interior First Peoples
by Nancy J. Turner
Trees and Shrubs of British Columbia
by T. Christopher Brayshaw
Plant Technology of First Peoples in British Columbia
by Nancy J. Turner
Saanich Ethnobotany
by Nancy J. Turner and Richard J. Hebda
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 22 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
Mushrooms of British Columbia
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 11 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
Mushrooms of British Columbia
Text copyright © 2021 by Andy MacKinnon and Kem Luther
Published by the Royal BC Museum, 675 Belleville Street,
Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 9W2, Canada.
The Royal BC Museum is located on the traditional territories of
the Lekwungen (Songhees and Xwsepsum Nations). We extend our
appreciation for the opportunity to live and learn on this territory.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing
from the publisher or a licence from Access Copyright, Toronto, Canada,
except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
See p. 482 for credits and copyright information for specific elements in the book.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Mushrooms of British Columbia / Andy MacKinnon and Kem Luther.
Names: MacKinnon, A. (Andrew), 1956- author. | Luther, Kem, 1946- author. |
Royal British Columbia Museum, publisher.
Series: Royal British Columbia Museum handbook.
Description: Series statement: Royal BC Museum handbook | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021012587X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210126019 |
ISBN 9780772679550 (softcover) | ISBN 9780772679567 (EPUB) |
ISBN 9780772679574 (Kindle) | ISBN 9780772679581 (PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Mushrooms—British Columbia—Identification. |
LCGFT: Field guides.
Classification: LCC QK605.7.B8 M33 2021 | DDC 579.609711—dc23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens.
C016245
• The decision to consume any foraged mushroom is ultimately the sole responsibility
(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:3)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:17)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:79)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:74)(cid:75)(cid:3)(cid:90)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:75)(cid:68)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:80)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:92)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:909)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:82)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:85)(cid:82)(cid:89)(cid:76)(cid:71)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:87)(cid:3)
information about edibility, neither the authors nor the Royal BC Museum can
accept liability or responsibility for food and health decisions made as a result of
relying on information presented on these pages.
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 44 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
Contents
Introduction 1 Pink-spored Gilled 221
About This Guide 1 Brown-spored Gilled 228
What Are Mushrooms? 3 Agaricus 229
Mushroom Life Cycles 4 Cortinarius 239
Ecological Roles 6 Inocybe and Similar 253
How to Use This Guide 9 Gymnopilus and Pholiota 261
Species Descriptions 10 Other Big Brown-spored 271
Collecting and Eating Wild Other Little Brown-spored 281
Mushrooms 22 Dark-spored Gilled 288
Other Ways to Enjoy Coprinus and Similar 289
Mushrooms 25 Gomphidius and Similar 295
Other Resources 27 Other Dark-spored 299
References Cited 29 Boletes 317
Toothed 335
Guide to Mushroom Groups 30 Clubs 349
Corals 369
Mushroom Descriptions Polypores 378
Veined 33 Jelly Fungi 411
Gilled 43 Puffballs 421
Pale-spored Gilled 44 Bird’s Nest Fungi 431
Russula 45 Morels and Similar 436
Lactarius 61 Cups 449
Hygrophorus and Similar 77 Truffles 463
Lepiota and Similar 97 Other Fungi 472
Amanita and Similar 105
Clitocybe and Similar 125 Acknowledgements 477
Tricholoma and Similar 145 Glossary 478
Mycena and Similar 173 Credits 482
Marasmius and Similar 185 Index 485
Pleurotus and Similar 207
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 55 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
“The individual who desires to engage in the study [of wild mushrooms]
must boldly face a good deal of scorn. He is laughed at for his strange
taste among the better classes, and is actually regarded as a sort
of idiot among the lower orders. No fad or hobby is esteemed so
contemptible as that of the ‘fungus-hunter’ or ‘toadstool-eater.’”
—An Elementary Text-book of British Fungi, 1887
(cid:41)(cid:88)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:80)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:3)(cid:56)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:73)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:89)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:3)(cid:58)(cid:75)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:901)(cid:899)(cid:900)(cid:902)(cid:17)(cid:3)(cid:41)(cid:88)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:73)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:92)(cid:86)(cid:3)
are one of the best ways to learn about mushrooms.
Mycological societies, natural history societies, and
fungus festivals host numerous forays each year.
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 66 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
Introduction
British Columbia is huge and diverse. Its 94.5 million hectares covers an area
larger than Washington, Oregon, and California combined. About 40,000
islands dot BC’s 26,000 kilometres of Pacific coastline. Inland, a series of
southeast-to-northwest-trending mountain ranges ripple across the province,
from the Vancouver Island Ranges and Queen Charlotte Ranges in the west
to the Rocky Mountains in the east. The mountains offer a wide array of
elevational zones (sea level to alpine) and precipitation zones (wetter on the
western, windward side of the mountains, drier on the leeward). All of this
physical diversity results in a tremendous variety of ecosystems, from rainforests
to near deserts, lush valley bottoms to windswept alpine, southern elements
to magnificent boreal forest. There are more types of ecosystems in BC than
anywhere else in Canada.
Ecological diversity generates species diversity—the more types of ecosystems
in an area, the more species we expect to find there. BC biologists find large
numbers of species of almost every group of organisms that they study. BC
has more species of plants, animals, and—most relevant for this book—fungi
than any other region in Canada. A recent inventory (Kroeger and Berch,
2017) of mushroom species recorded in BC counted just over 3,000 species of
macrofungi. (Macrofungi are fungi whose fruiting bodies are visible without
a microscope.)
About This Guide
Those who want to know more about BC mushrooms—whether to study
them with scientific goals, harvest them for the table, photograph them, or
pursue them as a hobby—are not as fortunate as those interested in BC flora
and fauna. There are good, up-to-date print guides that focus on BC plants,
BC birds, BC mammals, and BC marine life. When asked to recommend a
field guide for those beginning the study of BC mushrooms, however, we have
had to add qualifications. The only guides that were specific to BC and that
covered all of our province were far too dated and hard to find. Print guides
that were available were either not comprehensive enough or not specific to
BC. (We have provided a brief overview of these other resources at the end of
this introduction.)
In light of this, we were delighted when the Royal British Columbia Museum
agreed to produce a new field guide to BC’s mushrooms. It was appropriate that
the museum should take on this task—it had already published, in its widely
introduction 1
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 11 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
respected Handbook series, two previous field guides to the mushrooms of our
province. Almost 70 years ago, the museum issued Some Mushrooms and Other
Fungi of British Columbia by George Hardy (1952), with illustrations by Frank
Beebe, a small guide of about 90 pages containing 50 mushrooms. In 1964, the
museum published Guide to Common Mushrooms of British Columbia by Robert
Bandoni and Adam Szczawinski. It was larger than the first guide—about 170
pages and about 150 mushrooms. This second guide was revised in 1976 to
include some colour photographs. Both guides are long out of print.
This new field guide covers considerably more ground than the earlier
handbooks—we know a lot more about BC mushrooms than we did 50 years
ago. On these pages you will find main entries for 350 species of mushrooms,
each with one or more colour photographs. About 850 species are mentioned
somewhere in the book. Yet even these numbers represent only a fraction of
the BC species of mushrooms. To decide what should be included in the book
and what should be left out, we naturally tapped into our own field experience,
but we didn’t just rely on our subjective and limited perspectives. We compared
records of what had been officially observed in BC and deposited in herbaria.
We also collected inventories of mushroom species from different parts of the
province, trying to determine which species hikers and foragers would most
likely encounter and where they would encounter them. We asked BC mycology
specialists from several regions of the province to comment on our list and help
us find important species that we might have overlooked. The list that came
out of this long process is, we believe, a fairly accurate compendium of BC’s
most common and more easily identified mushrooms, as well as a sampling
of less common but distinctive species.
Our next challenge, once we had a tentative species list, was to decide how
to arrange them. A strict taxonomic approach seemed out of step with the
book’s role as a field guide—closely related mushrooms can look very different,
and distantly related mushrooms quite similar. In addition, taxonomic work
on the evolutionary history of mushrooms has lagged behind similar research
in other fields of biology—there would have been species that had uncertain
taxonomic homes. We opted instead for the widely used morphological-group
approach, clumping mushrooms by their overall shape. (See the “Guide to
Mushroom Groups,” p. 30.) Within each of these groups, we have arranged
the mushrooms by similarity rather than by alphabetized names. If you find
a specimen in the field and locate something like it in this book, you can flip
backward and forward a page or two to see if you can find a better fit.
Matching mushrooms with pictures, mycologists will tell you, is not the
best way to do field identification. We agree, and for that reason have provided
detailed descriptions for the mushrooms covered in this book. However, we
have also noticed that most people who are starting to learn mushrooms lean
heavily on a visual approach. For that reason, we have sought out the best
diagnostic pictures we could find. The works of some 60 photographers are
2 Introduction
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 22 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
found on these pages (see “Credits,” p. 482). Whatever use this book finds in
coming years will be due as much to these photos as to the text.
We have attempted to minimize use of technical terminology in this guide.
Serious students of mushrooms, we realize, will eventually have to acquire a
specialized vocabulary. Technical terms open the door to a larger discipline,
allowing students to interact with specialists and the scientific literature at the
heart of the discipline. Mycology is not unique in this respect—almost any
subject we want to master, from law to literature to science, brings with it large
numbers of words and concepts that can be unfamiliar to those outside the
discipline. But we are also aware that these special vocabularies, as important as
they are, can build a high fence around a subject, making it hard for beginners
to get started. The terms that we have employed in this guide can be found in
the glossary at the back of the book. (See p. 478.)
We have also de-emphasized the use of Latin and Greek binomials, referring
to the mushrooms in our text by their common rather than their scientific names.
To become fluent in the world of BC mushrooms, you will eventually have to
learn most of the scientific names, but you don’t have to start with these names.
Our goal in this book is practical—helping people identify mushrooms—but
we have also tried to capture some of the fun in fungi. On these pages you will
discover two dozen diversions that tie the study of mushrooms into a larger
historical and social context. We have also tried, in the descriptions and section
introductions, to provide counterpoints to the occasionally dull science of
mycology by looking at such topics as name derivations and eating. In short, this
guide is meant to be both educational and entertaining. We find our curiosity
tweaked and our passions provoked by this fascinating and beautiful group of
organisms—we hope yours will too.
What Are Mushrooms?
A fungus (plural: fungi) is an organism in the kingdom Fungi. It is one of the
three kingdoms in the domain Eukaryota that houses complex multicellular life.
The other two hold the plants (kingdom Plantae) and the animals (kingdom
Animalia). The fork in the eukaryote road that led to a separate kingdom
Fungi happened perhaps a billion years ago. Most theorists who study early
evolutionary pathways believe that plants diverged quite a bit sooner than
when fungi separated from animals. Fungi, therefore, are more closely related
to animals—including us—than they are to plants.
Today scientists believe that there are probably between two and four million
species of fungi on earth. The vast majority of them have never been described
by mycologists, the scientists who study fungi. Most of these fungi—groups
such as yeasts or moulds—are outside the scope of this book. The fungi that
produce the fleshy fruiting bodies that we call mushrooms include only a small
introduction 3
RRBBCCMM -- MMuusshhrroooommss -- IInntteerriioorr 2200221100551122 JJWW..iinndddd 33 22002211--0055--1122 99::2233 AAMM
