Mushrooms of the Southeast
Part of the Timber Press Field Guide series
An essential reference for mushroom enthusiasts, hikers, and naturalists
Mushrooms of the Southeast is a compact, beautifully illustrated guide packed with descriptions and photographs of hundreds of the region's most important mushrooms. In addition to profiles on individual species, the book also includes a general discussion and definition of fungi, information on where to find mushrooms and collection guidelines, an overview of fungus ecology, and information on mushroom poisoning and how to avoid it.
• Fully illustrates 330 species and discusses more than 1,000 of the region's most conspicuous, distinctive, interesting, and ecologically important mushrooms
• Covers northern Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia
• Helpful keys for identification
• Clear, color-coded layout Mushroom hunters and foragers rejoice! Mushrooms of the Southeast is the indispensable guide to finding and identifying the mushrooms in northern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Todd Elliott is a freelance naturalist, biologist, photographer, and forager. His research has led him to studies in fungal biology and taxonomy that have taken him to remote corners of the world to explore tropical rainforests, temperate woodlands, deserts, beaches, and high mountains on six continents.
Steven L. Stephenson is a research professor at the University of Arkansas. He has collected and studied fungi for more than three decades, and his research program has taken him to all seven continents and every major type of terrestrial ecosystem.
Introduction
For the purpose of this field guide, the Southeast is defined as extending from northern Florida to Maryland and encompassing the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. This region includes portions of seven different physiographic provinces in eastern North America. A physiographic province is defined as a geographic region with a characteristic type of landscape and usually a different type of subsurface rock (e.g., sandstone or limestone). Both landscape and subsurface rock contribute to the development of what is often a distinctive type of vegetation.
The Coastal Plain makes up the largest land area of the Southeast, extending from eastern Maryland southward to northern Florida and west to Louisiana. Virtually all of Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as major portions of southern and eastern Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, fall within this province. The Coastal Plain is characterized by a relatively flat landscape and sometimes poorly drained areas. Located west of the Coastal Plain is a second physiographic province, the Piedmont, which extends from eastern Alabama northward through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia to central Maryland. The Piedmont is composed of more rolling hills than the Coastal Plain.
The southern Appalachian Mountains occupy portions of nine states in the Southeast and include three physiographic provinces. The Appalachian Plateau (or Cumberland Plateau, as it is known in Kentucky) occurs from western Maryland to northern Alabama; this dissected tableland is broadest in West Virginia, where it occupies more than half the state. Located just east of the Appalachian Plateau is the Valley and Ridge, which also extends from western Maryland to northern Alabama; this region consists of a series of well-defined alternating ridges and valleys trending from north to south. The Blue Ridge, situated between the Piedmont and the Valley and Ridge, occurs from Maryland to northern Georgia. The highest mountains in the Southeast are part of the B