Top 5 Pacfic Northwest Mushroom Books

NOTE: If you live in Washington State I would recommend you check out my Top 5 Washington State Mushroom Books article instead!

A good mushroom identification book (or two.. or three..) is key if you want to search for and identify mushrooms correctly. A LOT of mushrooms look really similar to each other so you need to be really careful when identifying them. The best ways to identify mushrooms are either to find an expert in your area that can show you the ropes, or consult a few mushroom field guides such as the ones i've listed below.

I think it's important to emphasize how important it is to have multiple sources, when my brother and I go out, we usually carry 2 or 3 books with us so we can feel really confident in our identification.

One other note, before you buy any book, I really encourage you to look through them on Amazon. Most books offer the 'Look Inside' feature, where you can virtually flip through the pages of the book to get a feel for what it has to offer.

As always, if you feel there was a great mushroom book we missed, feel free to e-mail it to us at MushroomBlog.com@gmail.com

This book is a classic among mushroom hunters. The book includes detailed descriptions of more than 200 edible and poisonous mushroom species, as well as recipes, stories, and information on uses of various species such as for dying hair and clothing or playing games. This book is quite compact at 4" x 7" and 0.6" thick, so it should fit in most back pockets. The only drawback is that because this book was published in 1991, the photo quality on some of the mushroom shots could be better.

ASIN: 0898153883

Even though this is the most compact guide on this list (4.5" x 6" and 0.8" thick), this book still packs a lot of information with over 400 species included. This book also has a really cool section where it lists 'Top Edibles' and 'Top Toxics' which can be helpful if you do plan to consume your foraged mushrooms. Being published in 2019, this book is a rising star but should serve you well in the Pacific Northwest.

ASIN: 1591937922

Another David Arora classic! Many refer to this as 'the bible of the shroom world', whatever you want to call it, it is a great book. On the PNW Mushroom Identification Facebook Group this book as often recommended as a good book to start with. This is definitely not a 'pocket' guide at 6.1 x 9.1 inches and 2.1 inches thick, in fact this book also includes a lot more detail on terminology, classification, mushroom cookery and the meanings of scientific mushroom names than many of the other books on this list.

This book is a national guide, so depending on your area there may be some irrelevant mushrooms you have to sort through, but with over 2,000 species of mushrooms, you'll be hard pressed not to find the mushroom you're looking for!

ASIN: 0898151694

I feel guilty already putting this at number 4 as it is a great book, however since this is a national guide, there will be some irrelevant mushrooms you will have to dig through while searching in the Pacific Northwest. This book is definitely a good one to have in your collection with over 700 mushrooms detailed with color photographs and descriptive text. If you ever plan to search for mushrooms outside of the PNW this guide will serve you well. This book is a bit thick so I don't know if I would personally call it 'pocket-sized' but it is still fairly compact at 4.2" x 7.7" and 1.4" thick.

ASIN: 0394519922

Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest is a fairly well illustrated guide with 460 of the most common mushrooms of the PNW. On some mushrooms, it offers multiple photos at different angles to help with identification. However, in my opinion there is a bit of missing information here to be a comprehensive guide. Most guides have sections for each mushroom such as 'Season', 'Spores', 'Habitat', etc. However this book only has a small text block for each mushroom, most of which don't address common questions we might have as mushroom hunters. I have still included it on the list because it is fairly popular, but personally I do not own this book.

ASIN: 0881929352