Razor Strop Fungi & Fungi Books

[Nod]

Does anyone know if you can eat Razor Strop Fungi?

Also, could anyone recommend a good book for the identification of fungi, with proper photos. The one I currently own has watercolour picture and is not all that clear.

 

[george]

Hi Nod

In my opinion anything by Roger Phillips is tops.

He wrote an excellent book on wild foods (I think its just called Wild Foods!) which gives the recipes you might want to try, but his mushroom guides have excellent illustrations. Try a search on Amazon and see what there is.

There's also a new book by Antonio Carluccio specifically about fungi - I think its called "the quiet hunt" - I haven't read it yet but the last one he did was pretty good.

I use a couple of field keys written by various mycologists as well but they're written speciffically for botanists/mycologists and can be pretty hard going - lucky my wife is a botanist and can translate the technical terms for me then!

Definitely give Phillips a try though IMHO.

George

 

[Tony]

Look around the cheap book shops for the Roger Phillips books, I have picked up most of them for £5 each.

George brings up a good point on the identification via technical books being hard going. Up until now many of the fungi have been named scientifically (Latin). However, last month it was announced that over a thousand of our mushrooms and fungi would be given everyday names to make it easier for the layman to identify them and talk about them.

I will get more info on it :-D

 

[martin]

Razor-strop Fungus (Piptoporus betulinus) is inedible.
Source: Dorling Kindersley Handbooks - Mushrooms. ISBN 0-7513-2717-4.
This book is a good field guide as it uses photos for ID and give the edibility for every entry.

 

[nameless]

I dunno but a good book is ray mears essential bushcraft but it does not have that particular fungi in it but he does give some other good techniques :AR15firin

 

[Gary]

Its not edible unfortunately but it can be used as a razor strop, plaster and dry it makes an excellent smudge or means of carrying a ember.