The best mushroom books aren’t always mushroom-related.
Take the Tao Te Ching, for instance. This piece of Chinese philosophical literature was written approximately 2,500 years ago. The word “mushroom” is not mentioned anywhere in the text, but the Tao Te Ching might be one of the best mushroom books I have ever read.
To see what I mean, let’s look at a few words from verse 47.
The world may be known without leaving the house…
The further you go, the less you know.
How does this apply to mushrooms?
Replace world with mushrooms, and we soon realize that we do not have to travel too far to understand the fungal kingdom.
Tropical jungles, alpine bogs, and distant countries might seem like they have what a mushroom hunter needs. But that’s almost never entirely true. If we haven’t learned as much as a human is capable of learning at home, then we have work to do… at home.
In other words, if we have not learned the mushrooms that grow in our yards, then it might be a good idea to focus on those particular mushrooms before leaving the house (to use the Taoists’ words).
To inspire you to do this kind of work, I filmed a video that focuses only on yard-dwelling mushrooms. Some of the mushrooms grow in the grass. Others grow in your flower beds. All of the mushrooms can be found at home.