Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms: Everything You Need to Know, from Foraging to Cultivating

Discover, identify, harvest, and grow mushrooms with confidence—no experience required.

The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms is the complete starter handbook to mushroom identification, foraging, cultivation, and cooking, written by two leading mycology experts.

Mushroom foraging and identification can feel intimidating to newcomers. This accessible field guide + how-to manual removes the guesswork and gives you the knowledge and skills to start safely.

Inside, you’ll learn:

• Mushroom identification basics: anatomy, key visual traits, spore prints, habitat clues, and how to confidently distinguish edible wild mushrooms from poisonous look-alikes.
• Top wild mushrooms for beginners: large photos, clear descriptions, seasonality, geographic range, and foraging tips.
• Home mushroom cultivation: step-by-step illustrated tutorials for growing mushrooms indoors or outdoors—from kits to logs to DIY methods.
• Cooking & preserving mushrooms: simple techniques for cleaning, storing, dehydrating, and using mushrooms in delicious recipes year-round.
• Mushroom ecology & medicinal benefits: learn how fungi support healthy forests, soil regeneration, and sustainable living.

Whether you're exploring the woods for your first morel, starting a home mushroom grow, or simply curious about the natural world, this book gives you everything you need to join the growing community of mushroom enthusiasts.

Your journey into mycology starts here—identify mushrooms with confidence, forage responsibly, and enjoy the incredible world of fungi.

Britt Bunyard, PhD, is the founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the mycology journal Fungi. Britt has worked academically as a mycologist his entire career, writing scientifically for many research journals, popular science magazines, and books, most recently Mushrooms and Macrofungi of Ohio and Midwestern States (2012) by The Ohio State University Press. He has served as an editor for mycological and entomological research journals, and mushroom guide books. A popular evangelizer on all things fungal, Britt has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS’s NOVA and Wisconsin Foodie television programs, and in The Atlantic, Vogue, Forbes, Saveur, Women’s World, and others. He serves as Executive Director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival. He is the co-author of The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms (Quarry Books), author of Amanitas of North America book (The FUNGI Press), and. co-editor of MycoEpithalamia: Mushroom Wedding Poems (The FUNGI Press). Tavis Lynch has been studying mushrooms for over three decades and teaches several mycology classes throughout the Upper Midwest. He is a regular guest on Wisconsin Public Radio and has been featured on “Around the Farm Table” on PBS. He owns and operates a large-scale mushroom farm in the north woods, growing mushrooms with a unique method that he developed. He is the author of Mushroom Cultivation and the co-author of The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms.