All That the Rain Promises and More ...

After several good rains in the San Francisco Bay Area, we can start looking for mushrooms—the fruiting bodies of fungus! For some, this means gathering a delicious food source; for me, it means reveling in the wide variety of colors and shapes that pop up in the yard. I wanted a good resource for identifying mushroom varieties, and found All That the Rain Promises and More, by David Arora (Ten Speed Press, 1991). It is a “hip pocket guide to Western Mushrooms,” and companion to the author’s more comprehensive work Mushrooms Demystified (or MD).

The front and back end pages of the book provide diagnostic keys for quickly identifying mushrooms (gills, and no gills), and then finding information in the book. The introduction describes the book’s format, how to take a spore print, gear you need to collect mushrooms, ideal conditions for collecting them, and uses for mushrooms (cooking, medicine, mind altering, and dyeing yarn). The bulk of the book is dedicated to mushrooms organized by type, such as Chanterelles, Boletes, Puffballs, and Morels. Information for each entry includes key features, other features, where to find them, edibility, and special notes, as well as close up and clear photos of the mushrooms. Peppered through the text are recipes, and first-hand reports from mushroom hunters.

This handbook is a great resource and a lot of fun to read. I was amazed with the myriad shapes and sizes of the mushrooms depicted. Some of my favorites include the 50 pound puff balls, and the lacey morels. I love the deep black and violet shades of the Chanterelle, and the beautiful shades of dye produced by fairly plain mushrooms. I appreciated the section on deadly mushrooms, and was surprised that one of them is the classic red-capped specimen with white dots (Amanita muscaria) that is frequently used in children’s art!