400 Wild Mushrooms of India: An Illustrated Field Guide

Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Glossary. 3. Key to broad groups of mushrooms included in this book. 4. Gilled fungi or Agarics. 5. Fleshy poroid fungi or Boletes. 6. Pseudo-gilled fungi. 7. Bird's nest fungi. 8. Stomach fungi. 9. Cup fungi. 10. Saddle fungi. 11. Stinkhorn fungi. 12. Toothed fungi. 13. Coral fungi. 14. Earth tongue fungi. 15. Parasitic fungi. 16. Other fungi. 17. References. 18. Index of scientific names.

400 Wild Mushrooms of India: an illustrated field guide is an indispensable manual to anyone fascinated by wild mushrooms. It comprises of 400 species of wild mushrooms from different biogeographic zones of India most of which were established with morphotaxonomy and molecular phylogeny. Out of these 400 species, 53 are edible, 298 inedible, 43 inedible/poisonous and six (6) are poisonous. These species come under 13 morphology-based broad groups e.g. Gilled fungi (Agarics), Fleshy poroid fungi (Boletes), Pseudo-gilled fungi, Toothed fungi, Bird's nest fungi, Coral fungi, Cup/saucer fungi, Stinkhorn fungi, Stomach fungi, Saddle fungi, Earth tongue fungi, Parasitic fungi and others. Each entry (species) of this book is enriched with beautiful illustration, illuminating morphological description, common name (if any), information on edibility/toxicity, ecological notes, distribution, growing season and remarks. The easy-to-use "Key to broad groups of mushrooms included in this book" helps the reader to place each species to its respective broad group. Glossary, dealing with most of the morphology-based technical terms used in the descriptions, help to make this manual very useful in the field and laboratory. This field guide will be helpful to the mushroom hunters, professional mycologists, conservationists, foresters and policymakers.