Book Review
This book review was originally submitted to MushRumors, the OMS newsletter, for inclusion in the May/June 2025 issue.
A review of Dr. Michael Beug’s Mushrooms of Cascadia: An Illustrated Key to the Fungi of the Pacific Northwest, Second Edition
By Alice Chang
Alice Chang is the OMS book sales coordinator and serves on the board of directors as a member at-large.
Who?
For the curious mushroom enthusiast who is ready to explore beyond the “Can I eat it?” phase, where many of us begin our mushroom foraging journey.
What & where?
A compact field guide to what you need to know to forage and explore mushrooms of Cascadia (from northern California through Oregon, Washington and Idaho on up to B.C. Canada and Alaska) — with a special focus on the Columbia River Gorge — making it the perfect companion for those of us in and around the Portland/SW Washington area.
Why use it?
Dr. Beug shares his local knowledge from decades of experience living in the PNW. His guide offers a little of everything: simplifying identification by using photos first; simple steps on the how/where/when to find mushrooms; edibility; recipes; and a few mushroom lore stories that remind us the book was written by a mushroom lover — not just for cold, hard science.
How to use it?
Read the first short chapters for a quick grounding and primer using the illustrated/semi-dichotomous keys, then jump to Page 42 to start perusing the assortment of mushroom photos to narrow down what you might have found. For further mushroom taxonomic descriptions, reference the online resource MycoMatch, as the author intended, or check out a more traditional mushroom identification book such as the other Mushrooms of Cascadia book mentioned below.
Out of all the mushroom books in my ever-growing collection, Dr. Michael Beug’s Mushrooms of Cascadia is an essential companion when I head into the forest. It’s small enough (albeit a bit hefty) to carry in my pack and offers a curated assortment of the mushrooms you’re most likely to find in the PNW.
To clarify, Mushrooms of Cascadia (MoC) has a vibrant green cover and is a smaller size than the larger, textbook-like Mushrooms of Cascadia, written by Christian Schwartz and Noah Siegel, the perfect detailed reference companion to Dr. Beug’s field guide. (Stay tuned for a possible future review of their book).
Dr. Beug’s Mushrooms of Cascadia is a compact and robust field guide to PNW mushroom identification and offers local foraging intel compiled from decades of lived experience in the mushroom nirvana of Cascadia. It’s a unique balance that caters to both the identifiers who want a shortcut to genus-species and/or those who just want to know what they can safely put in their bellies.
Dr. Beug’s background as a chemistry professor at The Evergreen State College and years spent serving on the Toxicology Committee for the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) provide sufficient credibility for me to trust his insights and warnings on edibility and poisonings. He also famously had Paul Stamets (who wrote the book’s preface) as a student at Evergreen.
He begins by sharing his annual ritual of chasing early spring morels (Verpa bohemica) when the leaves of cottonwood trees “reach the size of mouse ears.” He teaches us to connect with seasonal changes like when trilliums turn pink and Calypso orchids bloom to know when prime morel season is upon us — a much more poetic means to help us observe what’s happening in nature, rather than sticking a thermometer into the ground to gauge soil temperature. Through these first few short chapters, he offers a connection to a sense of place and guides us to pay attention to the unfolding of nature throughout the year, more so than many other mushroom guides.
Details about elevation, seasonality and tree associates help us zone in on those elusive mushroom spots. I also appreciate that he starts with the “big three” — chanterelles, boletes and morels and their look-a-likes, leaving the latter half of the book to the gilled multitude.
Helpful notes highlight mushrooms that glow fluorescent under UV light and mushrooms used for color dyeing fabrics, and he doesn’t hold back on mentioning his favorite edibles and those he avoids.
His curated list of mushrooms focuses on those “seen most reliably every year,” so the featured species feel relevant and logical to what’s most likely to be fruiting, especially for those of us living near the Columbia River Gorge — where he resides. It’s broad enough, though, to cover the entire PNW and West Coast of the U.S. You’re not left wondering why that mystery mushroom that you just found scattered in clusters across the forest floor just doesn’t seem to appear in the book — unlike some other field guides. Dr. Beug is a scientist and a forager — you can feel the passion and love he has for both. I appreciate a mycologist who actually likes to eat mushrooms.
Occasional stories of mushroom lore are sprinkled throughout to express the soul and personality of someone with a deep love and fascination of fungi.
What this book is not:
- It is not intended as the “be all, end all” of mushroom field guides. This book was inspired in part from Dr. Beug’s time on the Pacific NW Key Council and the subsequent creation of the free online resource Mycomatch that features over 4000 PNW mushroom species. He wrote this book as a companion to MycoMatch. You won’t find any mushroom anatomy diagrams or long explanations of fungal ecology in MoC. You will likely still need other mushroom guides to cross-reference and validate your mushroom id theories. I use a combination of Schwarz and Siegel’s Mushrooms of Cascadia (the big comprehensive reference book), Daniel Winkler’s Fruits of the Forest and sometimes David Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified.
- While the glossary helps decipher the more technical terms, a brand new beginner will likely need a bit more foundational support like a simple “anatomy of a mushroom” diagram and basic Mushroom 101 ecology. David Arora’s All the Rain Promises can get you started. Then come back to Dr. Beug’s book to actually find the mushrooms you’re finding in the PNW woods with more up-to-date scientific names.
- He doesn’t focus on spore color but rather calls out the key attributes that will help you narrow down your id which I find more useful in the field, except for a few genera like the rusty-brown spores of Cortinarius.
If you have the first edition, here’s what’s new in this second edition published in Fall 2024:
- Formatting is easier to read. Photos are crisper than the first edition though I still wish they were bigger.
- Scientific names updated as of 2024, but you can reference his website for the latest name changes. It has more species.
- Provides a primer on page 33 on how to use the hybrid illustrated-dichotomous key and walks through examples to help you learn the logic of the key process. Hint: If you’re like me and tend to get overwhelmed (i.e., suffer from “paralysis by analysis” of the IF/IFs/THENs of dichotomous keys) consider going backwards by starting at the end with what you think you might have, then work back to see what other options it could also be.
Check out his website (www.mushroomsofcascadia.com) for a plethora of free resources that he generously shares with the world, such as recorded talks about mushroom edibility and poisonings (“Should I have eaten that mushroom?”) and detailed papers on medicinal mushroom treatments and recipes.
He’ll be our featured speaker at our upcoming May member meeting as well as our keynote mycologist at Spring Mushroom Camp! Don’t miss out on meeting this local legend who has been such a generous supporter of OMS and lifelong contributor to mycology worldwide. We will have copies of his book for sale at both events.
Please reach out to books@wildmushrooms.org if you’d like to suggest any mushroom books that might be helpful for us to offer to OMS members.