Mushrooms of the Smokies (en Inglés) - Jacob Kalichman;Paul Super

For fans of Fantastic Fungi documentary comes a photo-heavy field guide of select species of mushrooms and fungi found in and around the Great Smoky Mountains, published by national park partner Smokies Life. Mushrooms of the Smokies is part of a series of field guides covering several biodiverse populations in the Southern Appalachian region. The book presents 120 species or species groups, organized by category and color-coded for ease-of-use. The guide is useful for anyone interested in fungi in eastern North America, especially in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains. From teens to seniors, this book is a helpful companion on the trail and off in Southern Appalachia.

“Scientists have been kind of obsessed with competition and survival of the fittest ever since Darwin. And in a lot of ways, it’s really had a major influence on how we view the world. We try to favor those individuals that are big and strong and are going to win! We do this in forestry, we do this in agriculture, we do it in fisheries. And yet the way these individuals behave and the way they thrive is in their communities. A large, aggressive individual is nothing without his or her community. The cooperation that goes on is just as important as competition. In fact, it’s more important.” 

 ~Suzanne Simard, Ph.D., scientist, activist, and author of Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, speaking on the Fantastic Fungi Global Summit’s “Voices from the Underground”

Fungi and mushrooms are among the most diverse and widespread species on Earth. They are critical to the health of flora and fauna all over the planet. 

But, while flora and fauna are widely recognized as being important things to protect and preserve, fungi are often overlooked and not included in large-scale environmental conservation efforts.

Fantastic fungi

Since its release in 2019, the film Fantastic Fungi by Louie Schwartzberg has helped to make the general population more aware of the importance of this kingdom of life that hovers in between the animals and the vegetables. 

The film explains how fungi brought life to earth along with the wisdom of a billion years; how we humans divided from fungi about 650 million years ago and are more closely related to fungi than to any other kingdom; and how fungal networks represent rebirth, regeneration, and rejuvenation. They have the ability to break things down, decompose dead organisms, clean up messes like oil spills, and move nutrients back into the life cycle. 

The branching threads of mycelial networks are the means by which trees communicate, as we have recently learned through books like Richard Powers’ Pulitzer-winning Overstory, Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard and Entangled Life from Merlin Sheldrake. 

Smokies Life’s creative director Frances Figart had been following this emergence of fungal networks into public consciousness with great interest, being blown away to learn that the fungal kingdom comprises 1.5 million species, 20,000 of which produce mushrooms or fruiting bodies. With everyone purchasing mushroom-themed items of every kind—including mushroom supplements, mushroom tea, mushroom CBD, and even mushroom coffee—she thinks now is a fantastic time to add to Smokies Life’s “Of the Smokies” collection of small guidebooks one representing the fungi and mushrooms of the most-visited US national park.

A guide to fungi and mushrooms 

Smokies Life’s collection of pocket-sized field guides includes birds, wildflowers, reptiles and amphibians, ferns, trees, mammals, and butterflies and moths. Fishes of the Smokies is one of the newer books in the series, and an insect guide is in the works by Jim and Leslie Costa of Highlands Biological Station in Western North Carolina. With so many species from which to choose, of course these small guidebooks can barely scratch the surface on their subjects. Therefore, such a tiny book proves an easy-to-use, accessible basic identification guide for more fungal species than the average park visitor needs. 

This introduction to fungi and mushrooms includes basic anatomy and life-cycle descriptions in such a way as to be accessible and non-off-putting for the beginner. Species accounts are sparse on text and heavy on photos from all angles showcasing the very most common mushroom species that park visitors are likely to see and can learn to recognize. As an expert, Kalichman offers up 120 of the most common species. 

Mushrooms are very hard for most folks to ID, but visitors to the park are likely to see lots of easily identified ones such as morels, the big orange amanita, huge dryads saddle, puffballs, earth stars, corals, hemlock varnish shelf, chicken of the woods, oysters, scarlet cup, northern tooth, black locust polypore, golden chanterelle, old man of the woods, black trumpets, orange peel, or jack-o-lanterns—just to name a few. 

Ignored by many, but vital to life on Earth as cleaners and replenishers, fungi and mushrooms could actually be the key to the salvation of our species. Having been captured by the beautiful photos and easy ID of a few species, readers can be depended upon to engage with the role of mushrooms in the ecosystem and become more informed supporters of conservation efforts.