The Mushroom Book Mystique
Updated: Oct 3
Whatever your interest in mushrooms, we have the book for you!
Mushrooms thrive on the banks of the Williams River, which runs behind Shaker Mill Books and the Book Mill. Books about mushrooms are almost as abundant as the umbrella-shaped ‘shrooms that captured my attention as I unloaded books targeted toward mycophiles and mycophobes alike. Whatever your interest in mushrooms, I can almost guarantee: there’s just the book for you at Shaker Mill Books.
But why? Why have mushrooms popped up like puffballs?
I foraged publication history for insight into the mushroom book mystique and learned that this book trend is actually a historical thru line.
Xavier Carteret and Aline Hamonou-Mahieu cite several books about mushrooms in The Drawings of Mushrooms by Claude Aubriet. They reveal that mushrooms’ enigmatic origins as neither plant nor animal have puzzled at least since Plato and Pliny. The people of antiquity believed that thunderstorms spawned them. The Folger Shakespeare Library’s Mushrooms in early Modern England online exhibit explains that mushrooms' unclassifiable nature resulted in their reputation as “earthly excrescences.” One Puritan denounced mushrooms as “all being of an evil qualitie.” Their morality may have been up for debate, but one thing experts agreed on was that they were a poor dietary choice. They were considered unhealthy, and one doctor labeled mushroom eaters as “phantastical.”
Of course, warnings against mushrooms have never stopped people from sinking their teeth into meaty portobellos and saucy shiitakes. Recipes for the savory, succulent, and versatile morsels appear frequently in popular publications and household management books. The Victorian-era Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, for example, offers a mushroom ketchup recipe sure to counter complaints over ‘shrooms’ slimy, spongy mouthfeel. A recipe in a 1766 issue of the Lady’s Magazine transforms humble fungi into “Princess Tench,” a classy first course involving mushrooms, truffles, fat-livers, sweetbreads, ham, herbs, and other ingredients.
Those protesting mushrooms' health benefits had a point, though. Mushrooms are good for you. Until they kill you, or do their darnedest trying. According to a 1766 article in the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, mushrooms tried awfully hard to kill a girl after she ate mushrooms her father gave her. She had seizures, but survived. Of course her poisoning was an accident.
…or was it?
I’ve concluded that mushrooms’ strange sauté of the smurfy and the sinister has a large part to play in the mushroom book mystique. They cannot be known, despite centuries of efforts by scientists and illustrators, naturalists and amateur mycologists, and an industry of professional field guides and identification books. Authors of these books are quick to proclaim: caution! Be careful!
I wondered if artificial intelligence made mushroom identification any more specific, so I gave a certain technology's reverse image search a spin using a picture I'd taken behind the stores. I tried several times, with different but generally consistent results. They could be false parasols. Or the generally-benign White Dapperling. Or their near-twin, the toxic Destroying Angel. Hmmm...
I wasn’t satisfied by the vagaries in my results. On my final attempt, I isolated just one mushroom for identification. At that point, I had my answer. My mushroom was...a melon?!
It seems there are no foolproof resources for finding out if a fungus is friend or foe. There are, however, plenty of human-generated resources that are unlikely to confuse a morel for a melon. There’s the Audubon Society’s Mushrooms of North America; Eugenia Bone’s Mycophelia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms; Britt A. Bunyard’s Fungi Decoded …and so many more.
Books about mushrooms are as prolific as the fungus among us. Forgive me for the pun. I couldn’t help myself. See, I’ve been reading Dr. Fun Guy’s Passport to Kingdom Fungi and exploring the wacky world of mushrooms.
Want to join me? You can buy your copy at Shaker Mill Books. I’ll meet you there!
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