Mushroom Finder: Identifying Fungi in North America

Begin to identify mushrooms across North America with this pocket-size guide.

If you're fascinated by fungi or the practice of foraging, then learning to identify mushrooms is essential. While this is not a guide to edible mushrooms, Mushroom Finder by Jacob Kalichman is a great tool for getting started. The handy, easy-to-use booklet is your first step in identifying mushrooms, helping to provide you with a general identification to mushrooms that are fungus-like in appearance throughout the continental United States and Canada.

Not your typical mushroom guide, the booklet is aimed at breadth rather than depth--so you're likely to find the content that you're looking for, but you might not be able to identify a given fungus to its specific species or genus. To that end, Mushroom Finder provides a dichotomous key to identifying fungi. Simply answer a series of simple questions about the location, shape, or appearance of the mushroom, including its cap, spores, and stem. Along the way, professional illustrations by Roo Vandegrift help you arrive at a positive general identification.

Book Features:

• Step-by-step guide to identifying fungi


• More than 300 types of fungi


• Professional line illustrations with key markings for identification


• Small (6- by 4-inch) format that fits into a pocket or pack

This guide is applicable to mushrooms that are or look like a fungus, that are at least 5mm tall or wide, that have feelable thickness in all directions (unlike leaf spots), and that are still fresh.

Jacob Kalichman is a field mycologist from California and Tennessee. In 2010, while studying logic at Stanford University, he became devoted as an amateur to wild mushroom identification and photography. With an ongoing interest in identifying gilled mushrooms in difficult genera, he has also taken up sharing updates in mycological taxonomy. He compiled "A compendium of generic names of agarics and Agaricales," published as a paper in 2020 and continually updated. He also maintains a list of suggested common names and associated guidelines for North American fungi. Jacob wrote the current edition of the National Audubon Society's Mushrooms of North America.

Dr. Roo Vandegrift is a queer scientist and illustrator. He received his doctorate in mycology (the study of mushrooms and fungi) from the University of Oregon's Institute of Ecology and Evolution, focusing much of his dissertation work on the fungi at Los Cedros Biological Reserve, in Ecuador. He has published peer-reviewed research in internationally acclaimed journals and is the producer of the independent documentary film Marrow of the Mountain, which examines mining and conservation issues in the Ecuadorian Andes. He currently serves as a plant pathologist for the USDA, identifying fungi intercepted at the border to prevent the introduction of potentially devastating invasive species.