>Guidebooks are worse than useless You need a better guidebook, and spend time with it. As with plants or any taxonomy there are rules and things to do that ca

>Guidebooks are worse than useless You need a better guidebook, and spend time with it. As with plants or any taxonomy there are rules and things to do that can classify things. It's more than just a photo of the thing that its about. You need to spend time to learn, as you would learn a programming language, the rules for classification. It takes time and some effort to learn how to know whats good to eat, what makes you sick and what'll get you high. Essentially it's a form of biological inquiry so treat it like a science. Almost every mycologist uses a few books and tools to identify their haul. edits: rule of thumb for eating: The range of edible but not eatable / awful mushrooms is huge. The range of deadly mushrooms is small. The range of edible and delicious mushrooms is small too. The bad and good ranges don't overlap on the whole. Thus, like with identifying garden plants you only need to learn a few kinds to be able to hunt the lovely edible mushrooms. But you do still need to learn and spend time in the learning.