Photo Error in Food for Free?

[Broch]

I was browsing through Richard Mabey's Food for Free (the Collins 2001 edition, not the latest 2012 edition) and noticed the photo on page 35 that claims to be Hemlock - Conium maculatum.

Can someone with a copy of the book and more experience than me tell me if I am wrong - but I don't think that is Conium maculatum; the leaves should be feathery and 2 - 4 pinnate shouldn't they?

A bit of a dangerous error to make I would have thought

 

[Janne]

I do not have the book, but compare to several internet sites/ pictures.

If the flower bunch is all white - do not touch or eat.

Find a hemlock plant. Smell ii whole, smell the crushed leaves. Taste a TINY bit. Do not swallow, and rinse your moth carefully after.
It is important to not only know the look of it, as the plant can look atypical. Important to also know the smell and taste.
I did this this summer with my son.

 

[Broch]

I do not have the book, but compare to several internet sites/ pictures.

If the flower bunch is all white - do not touch or eat.

Find a hemlock plant. Smell ii whole, smell the crushed leaves. Taste a TINY bit. Do not swallow, and rinse your moth carefully after.
It is important to not only know the look of it, as the plant can look atypical. Important to also know the smell and taste.
I did this this summer with my son.

Thanks Janne, but I don't actually have a problem identifying this particular plant (I consider it very useful ) but I am concerned that a book by a respected forager and plant expert should have it wrong. Really I am seeking confirmation that the photo is incorrect.

 

[Janne]

Understand!

Have you tasted it? Foul! I do not understand how peple can eat even a tiny, tiny piece.

For foragers, the important knowledge is not what is tasty, pslatablr and can be eaten, but what can not be eaten.

 

[Keith_Beef]

If I've understood your post, you think that there is a picture on page 35 labelled as being poisonous hemlock, and you think it is a different plant.

That doesn't seem to be particularly dangerous, to me, just sloppy work on the part of the editor at the publishing house or of the printer.

I'd consider it dangerous to label a picture of hemlock with the name of a similar, edible plant like mother-die.

 

[Broch]

I understand what you are saying but it is equally dangerous the way it is. Someone could be faced with poisonous hemlock but assume it's not because it doesn't match the photo in a respected book! Any misidentification of a plant this dangerous is not acceptable.

 

[Geoff Dann]

I am afraid to say that there are quite a few serious mistakes of this sort in the 2012 edition. The fungi section is incomprehensibly bad.

p362 is supposed to be a pic of a field mushroom, but Agaricus campestris only ever grows with grass and this is in woodland. It's actually a horse mushroom, which looks a lot liike a poisonous yellow stainer.

p373 is supposed to be the poisonous lookalike of field mushrooms and horse mushrooms - the yellow stainer (A. xanthodermus). In fact the image isn't even an Agaricus at all, but of an edible honey fungus. So he's got both the best known edible mushroom *and* its poisonous lookalike wrong.

p390 is supposed to be an excellent edible yellow swamp russula, but it is the wrong colour - probably a species called Russula foetens (stinking brittlegill).

p347 is supposed to be an edible velvet shank, but is clearly sheathed woodtuft - also edible, but a species notorious for being confused with deadly Galerina marginata.

I feel uncomfortable criticising the author of a book that competes with my own, but these mistakes are of sufficient magnitude that that book should probably have been pulped and corrected. It's absolutely not acceptable.

 

[Broch]

Thanks Geoff, I hadn't even started looking at the fungi! I think I'll get rid of my copy.

Your book is in daily use at the moment

 

[Broch]

Ah, you mean the 2012 edition is as bad/worse?!!
Not acceptable

 

[Geoff Dann]

Ah, you mean the 2012 edition is as bad/worse?!!
Not acceptable

It's worse, or at least the fungi section is. I haven't spotted any errors elsewhere in the book, but I haven't looked that carefully either. I bought it when researching fungi foraging books that would compete with the one I was writing, but found the lack of information generally made it not a very useful book. Far too many gratuitous over-sized, duplicated photos, and acres of white space, but not much information about what to do with stuff. It's a book for armchair foragers to admire on their coffee table.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Thanks Geoff, I hadn't even started looking at the fungi! I think I'll get rid of my copy.

Your book is in daily use at the moment

Glad to hear that.

I think I'll get rid of my copy.

So you have a copy of the 2012 edition? Have a look at the photo on p372. How can anybody think that is a yellow stainer? It is quite clearly not an Agaricus at all, and it is growing on an old, moss-covered log! And that is the species responsible for more UK poisonings than all the others put together.

 

[Keith_Beef]

I am afraid to say that there are quite a few serious mistakes of this sort in the 2012 edition. The fungi section is incomprehensibly bad.

p362 is supposed to be a pic of a field mushroom, but Agaricus campestris only ever grows with grass and this is in woodland. It's actually a horse mushroom, which looks a lot liike a poisonous yellow stainer.

p373 is supposed to be the poisonous lookalike of field mushrooms and horse mushrooms - the yellow stainer (A. xanthodermus). In fact the image isn't even an Agaricus at all, but of an edible honey fungus. So he's got both the best known edible mushroom *and* its poisonous lookalike wrong.

p390 is supposed to be an excellent edible yellow swamp russula, but it is the wrong colour - probably a species called Russula foetens (stinking brittlegill).

p347 is supposed to be an edible velvet shank, but is clearly sheathed woodtuft - also edible, but a species notorious for being confused with deadly Galerina marginata.

I feel uncomfortable criticising the author of a book that competes with my own, but these mistakes are of sufficient magnitude that that book should probably have been pulped and corrected. It's absolutely not acceptable.

I've been looking at the 2012 edition of the book on Amazon, and the photos do not seem to be labelled... On page 362 I see a description of A. campestris and on page 363 an unlabelled photo of some kind of fungus growing near some trees (the index, however, gives page number 363 in italics under the entry for A. campestris.

I can't find the sheathed woodtuft, neither as Kuehneromyces mutabilis nor as Pholiota mutabilis. There is, however, an entry in the book for Galerina mutabilis and an illustration on page 454; the Wikipedia page for G. mutabilis redirects to K. mutabilis...

As for "feel[ing] uncomfortable criticising the author of a book that competes with my own", I don't think you're criticizing the author. If there are so many errors in the 2012 edition, I would suspect the publishers of introducing them, trying to make a field handbook into what you rightly describe as a coffee-table book.

 

[Broch]

If there are so many errors in the 2012 edition, I would suspect the publishers of introducing them, ...

I suspect you're right; I'm sure the author knows what these plants and fungi look like - it will be people responsible for editing and compiling the new versions and formats that will have made mistakes. It clearly shows the need to cross-reference though

 

[Robson Valley]

First editions tend to go like that. If it's not one editorial error, it's another. It happens.

In a thin book of collecting techniques, I wrote a key to the butterflies of the central interior of British Columbia.
Grouse hunting in the autumn less than a month after publication, I found two species that I'd missed. Migratory, no less.

If the book is to survive the criticism, send in every last fault that you can find.

The revised second printing will be a keeper.

 

[Broch]

Food for Free was first published in 1972; I think they've had time to sort out any errors.

 

[Robson Valley]

Can you buy the copyrights and fix it? Or else it's a hopeless yawn-er.

 

[Broch]

I think the truth is in 1972 it was a 'must have' reference in the UK and people still refer to it as 'seminal' but it didn't try too hard to be an identification reference (used coloured plates and line drawings). Now, there are a lot of books covering the same subject and, although it now includes photos (some in error as we've said), it has been superseded.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Can you buy the copyrights and fix it? Or else it's a hopeless yawn-er.

For a book first published in 1972 and that has been through several editions? This is probably a cash cow for the publisher, so buying out the rights would cost you an arm and a leg. Richard Mabey is still alive and working, I think.

If I had written a book and the publisher introduced significant errors into new editions, I would be taking legal advice... It takes a lot of effort and a lot of time to establish a name as an authority on a subject. For a publisher to tarnish that reputation by sloppy editing is unacceptable.

 

[Broch]

Agreed.

 

[Janne]

Has anybody been poisoned due to the errors?

That would be serious.