Mycelium North

Fungi of the northern woods — and the people and books that will actually tell you what you found.

@myceliumnorth

Suspected poisoning · free · 24/7 1-800-222-1222

Call or use webPOISONCONTROL at the first suspicion — don't wait for symptoms. Keep an uneaten piece of the mushroom, base of the stem included.

Start here

Get a human to look at it
New Hampshire Mycological Society Forays and walks in the Granite State led by experienced foragers, plus lectures on microscopy, cultivation and cooking.→ Boston Mycological Club Walks, lectures and beginner-friendly identification across eastern New England. Recorded lectures for members.→ Northeast Mycological Federation The umbrella for Northeast clubs — member club list and the big annual regional foray.→ Find a club anywhere in North America NAMA's directory of affiliated clubs by state and province. Not in the Northeast? Start here instead.→ Mushroom Observer Post a specimen with good photos — cap, gills, full stem base, substrate — and let experienced mycologists weigh in. Free.→ iNaturalist Community IDs and a live record of what's fruiting near you. Its suggestions are a hypothesis, never a clearance.→

Learn to key it out

Free, and better than any app
MushroomExpert.Com Michael Kuo's 1,300+ species pages and keys — the free reference most of us actually use. Deliberately carries no edibility claims.→ Keys to the major groups The starting point for every key on that site. Learn to work a key rather than pattern-match a photo.→ Fungal Diversity Survey How to document a find properly, plus regional Rare Fungi Challenges you can contribute real data to.→ Field guides for the Northeast NEMF's vetted reading list. Three to start with are named below.→
The shelf we'd build first
  • Mushrooms of the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada — Timothy J. Baroni
  • Mushrooms of Northeastern North America — Bessette, Bessette & Fischer
  • Mushrooms of the Northeast: A Simple Guide to Common Mushrooms — Marrone & Sturgeon

Safety

Read before the pan
The ten poisoning syndromes NAMA's plain description of what each toxin group does, how fast, and how to file a case report.→ Why we don't trust ID apps Clinical Toxicology, 2023: across 78 expert-verified specimens the best of three apps was right 49% of the time.→

Go deeper

Past the field guide
Mycological Society of America The professional side — Mycologia, annual meetings and forays, position statements on fungal science.→