Okay, so we’ve gone through the cultivation books and the foraging books, but what’s the point of finding all these mushrooms if you aren’t going to do anything with them? There are many edible species and they can have tastes and textures quite unlike the cultivated species.

This guide covers more than 450 different species and has plenty of handy illustrations to help you learn.Inside, you’ll find countless pictures of both fully grown and young fungi by notable mycological illustrators Chris Shields and Denys Ovenden. While these are my personal favourite mushroom hunting books, there are plenty of other excellent resources available, each with their unique features and purposes. It goes deep into the ways that mushrooms are grown commercially all over the world, some of the major trends in mushroom cultivation, and ways that mushroom growers are overcoming problems and becoming more efficient. Also included are more than 1,500 photos and an illustrated glossary to help you distinguish different varieties. I'll third that, The Collins book was my first ever shroom book given to me a couple of years ago and though not as comprehensive as RP I reckon it's a good un for the novice.

Find out how to identify the most common species found in Britain, plus essential safety tips on which mushrooms are edible or poisonous with our British fungi guide. This is the one book I have had on my shelf since I first started to learn how to grow mushrooms, and I’ve probably flipped through it a million times since. Twenty different varieties are then explored in depth - from the edible to the poisonous (and even the hallucinogenic!My partner and I did the "what mushroom are you" quiz and learnt that we're both scarlet elf cups, which it turns out is a real mushroom that exists. Some people will note that many of the recipes are hard to follow and contain weird hard to find ingredients, so they aren’t entirely practical….