Customer Reviews

Mushrooms of Cape Cod and the National Seashore

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I had high hopes for this book, as I live on Cape Cod and am a beginner in recognizing mushrooms. It seems to be the basic title for "shroomers" on the Cape.

I am not stupid, so I wonder why I find the color key at the beginning of the book TOTALLY CONFUSING! Its relation to the main text is a mystery. In "How to use the color key" we are told that the sequence of species in the color key corresponds to the sequence of species text in the book. Sounds simple, no? OK, the first species pictured in the color key is the yellow Cantharellus cibarius. The first group of fungi in the text is Bird's Next Fungi. Already I am confused. What does Cantharellus have to do with Bird's Nest Fungi?

Maybe the photos are not related to the color key text? Back to the color key. Ah ha, so the Cantharellus photo refers to group 3 (Chantarelles and allies"), not group 1. And Boletes are group 2, though in the color key it is picture number 4. Huh? I guess there is no photo for group 1, even though "How to use" states: "Color illustrations for each of the sixteen major groups are provided in the key." There is a total of 18 photos in the color key, so I guess these do not after all correspond to the 16 groups of fungi. I now grasp that the color photos in the "color key" actually have nothing to do with the text and are scattered randomly, out of order. This is really helpful in a so-called color key...

I have by now given up on figuring out how to use the color photos in the supposed color key, which is nothing of the sort. What about the text? I expect to see 16 text sections in the "color key," one for each of the groups in the main text, as promised in "How to use the color key." I see that there are . . . 15, not 16!! Who edited this book? The text items are equally confusing. Typical is "7b. Fruiting body not as above. -->8" First, not clear whether "above" refers to photo above the text or to the previous line of text, above the photo. Referring to position of referred-to item is a classic editing no-no. Refer to number/name/page of item meant, not "above" or "below." Second. there is no item numbered 8. There is 8a and 8b. Furthermore there is a photo under 8a, of Morchella esculenta. Is this photo relevant to 8a. or not? 8b ("Fruiting body not as above") is under a photo of Gyromitra infula. Again, does "above" refer to the 8a text, the photo under 8a, or the photo above 8b? Etc. This continues throughout this supposed entry point for using the book actually to identify fungi. I am now getting seriously annoyed.

Another source of confusion: Under the points 1a and 1b we have 2a and 2b, but 2a and 2b are indented. This implies that they are subsections of 1b. But in what sense? Similarly many other numbered points are indented, but not all. No explanation is given for this.

As an editor and frustrated would-be fungi identifier I am now gnashing my teeth. I would have organized this color key so that a user could actually understand it.
1. Each group of the 16 should be labeled consistently in all sections that rely on this org. structure. There would be 16 photos, sixteen text groupings, corresponding to the sixteen groups in the main text (as promised by "How to use"). Then, each photo used would also be labeled with the group name as well as the species name so users would know for sure what it is illustrating.
2. Do not refer to readers to point 8 if there is no point 8.
3. Do not indent sections where there is no obvious content-based reason for doing so.
4. Provide an actual step-by-step example of how to use the color key to identify a fungus. I think if the authors had asked a beginner actually to do this, they might quickly have realized quickly how confusing and therefore useless this section is.

In fact, I see no use for the color key at all. If color is going to be the organizing principle for a mushroom guide, then why have a confusing "key" at all? Just organize the larger photo section at the end according to color. The page reference at the photo then suffices to point the user to the proper group. Many nature guides, e.g., wild flowers, do just this: Organize the photos so that users can quite easily locate the item, then refer to the descriptive text, which can be organized along different lines, such as geog. location; scientific classification; etc. Tree guides often take leaf shape as an entry point for aspiring identifiers. (Incidentally I see no advantage to arbitrarily organizing the main text for the sixteen groups alphabetically, since readers do not know the names of the groups before they begin, so they will not be using alph. order to find anything. It is totally arbitrary in terms of the actual qualities of mushrooms. It might have had some limited usefulness if the photo labels actually referred the user to a group name instead of just a page number.)

I would do a major overhaul of this book at the next edition--mainly either vastly improve the color key or just get rid of it and provide more info. in the main color photo section, which easily doubles as a "color key." As is it is actually a demotivator for continuing to try to use the book to identify fungi. Meanwhile I am waiting to get the Paul Stamets's mushroom guide and hope it will be more helpful than this one.