Mushrooms

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The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our In 1975 Roger Phillips began his life’s major work of photographing and publishing pictures of the World’s garden plants. Using modern photographic techniques, Roger set out to develop an encyclopedic collection of books to show the difference between plants as diverse as mosses, roses and annuals. His first book Wild Flowers of Britain was a huge success, selling 400,000 copies in the first year. He has since written 20 additional volumes (often with his co-author Martyn Rix) selling over 4.5million copies worldwide. He was managing director of RogersRoses.com from 2001 and his books included Vegetables: The Definitive Guide for Gardenersand The Random House Book of Perennials(both with Martyn Rix), Wild Food, Mushrooms, and The Botanical Garden. Plants for Europe's Graham Spencer said: "So many great books came from Roger Phillips pen and camera. I have several on my shelf, still referred to regularly."

Unsurpassed in both illustrative and descriptive detail, Mushrooms contains over 1,250 photographs, often showing the specimens in various stages of growth, and includes all the latest botanical and common names as well as current ecological information on endangered species. There are two main groups of fungi: the first I call the Water Carriers, and the second I call the Rubbish Collectors. Both of them are essential to life on earth. The Water Carriers live in symbiosis with flowering plants. In 1975 Phillips began his life’s major work of photographing and publishing pictures of the world’s garden plants. Using modern photographic techniques, he set out to develop an encyclopedic collection of books to show the difference between plants as diverse as mosses, roses and annuals. His first book ‘Wild Flowers of Britain’ was a huge success, selling 400,000 copies in the first year. He wrote more than 30 additional books (often with his co-author Martyn Rix) selling over 4.5 million copies worldwide. Phillips published books about trees and ferns and wild flowers before he got to mushrooms. He didn’t think the publisher at Pan would go for it. The British, he suggests, had always been funny about fungi. While across Europe and beyond natives would be out in fields and forests as if on pilgrimage in mushroom season, in the UK there was no tradition. “We were famous for herbs from medieval times, of course,” says Phillips. “But those books tend to refer to mushrooms as ‘the spit of Jesus’ or ‘the fruit of the devil’. Because they grew up from nowhere overnight they were associated with witchcraft.” He shudders at the thought. “We are going to be dust long enough,” he says. And then he brightens. “According to a French mycologist there is a mushroom that grows only on the human brain, in graveyards. I suppose because they are uniquely nutritious.” He laughs at the idea. “I don’t know if it’s a comforting thought – but there it is.” OFMAlso, Roger Phillips was a contributor and co-author of many scientific and recreational articles. His entitled works, such as “ Fungi will have a role in ridding the world of plastic” and “ How to cut grocery bills and eat healthy.” Also, you can read his book about Mushrooms and all their types. It contains over 1250 photographs of mushrooms and fungi, often showing the specimens in various stages of growth, including all the latest botanical and common names and current ecological information on endangered species. Mushrooms of North America : The Most Comprehensive Mushroom Guide Ever with over 1,000 Color Photos The actual fungus is a vast network of very fine fibres, called hyphae, and a mass of hyphae is called mycelium. The single fibres are too fine to be seen with the human eye and thus, infinitely more capable than plant roots of finding water supplies, trace elements and minerals essential to the health of the plant or tree they grow in symbiosis with.

Roger Phillips, who has died aged 88, was a self-taught plantsman and portrait photographer of plants, the author or co-author of numerous beautifully illustrated books, including guides to wild flowers and edible wild plants, roses and other garden flowers, fungi, and even fish.His first book, Wild Flowers of Britain (1977), sold 400,000 copies in its first year. He went on to publish more than 30 photographic field guides (often written with Martyn Rix) which have sold more than 4.5 million copies worldwide. Roger has written and presented two major six-part TV series on gardening (BBC & Channel 4). Famed for his ebullient personality and garish red glasses, he has become a well-recognised figure in the world of gardening. Phillips presented or co-presented two television series based on his books on gardening, The Quest for the Rose (1994, BBC Two) and The 3,000 Mile Garden (1995, PBS), in which he and the US gardener Lesley Land compared and contrasted their gardening methods and preferences. Mushrooms: The Photographic Guide to Identify Common and Important Mushrooms (The Photographic Guide to Identity) In this group of Water Carriers can be found nearly all the conventional mushrooms with cap, stem and gill or pores. These include many of the best edibles and also the deadly poisonous species. The Rubbish Collectors are no less valuable in the whole ecosystem.

Definitely one of the largest pictorial collection of UK native fungi and a must own for anyone interested in fungi. Roger Phillips has written the best mushroom book I know.' - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, author of River Cottage Veg Every Day! In exchange, this makes it possible for trees and plants to live in poor soils, and in fact, it is the support of the truffle group of fungi that can be found on very poor, limey soils.

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Adams, Tim (15 March 2020). "Roger Phillips: 'Fungi will have a role in ridding the world of plastic' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 19 November 2021.

He has learned a lot, too, from spending time with a Native American tribe, the Nez Perce, in Idaho, who retain some of the ancient knowledge of hunter-gatherers. Not only did Phillips increase his knowledge of edible tubers, he became friends with an eminently quotable chief: “How long will it take mankind to realise that you cannot eat money?” He wrote and presented two six-part TV series on gardening (BBC & Channel 4). Famed for his ebullient personality and garish red glasses, he has become a well-recognised figure in the world of gardening.In the meantime, he follows Voltaire’s dictum of “tending his own garden”. In London this involves organising the planting and upkeep of the communal plot in Ecclestone Square where he lives; and also doing a bit of experimenting at a small cottage he owns in Wiltshire. He cooks and eats outside whenever he can; his last birthday meal involved – “bugger the neighbours” – a wood fire on the balcony of his flat. Meanwhile, his Mushrooms and Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe (1981), Mushrooms (2006, with a foreword by David Bellamy) and, for transatlantic foragers, Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America (2005) earned him the soubriquet “the mushroom man”. Roger Phillips: he cautioned that novice mushroom hunters should always have experts identify their finds Phillips, Roger, Derek Reid, Ronald Rayner, and Lyndsay Shearer. 1981. Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe. London: Pan Books. His entry on the Death Cap, “the most deadly fungus known”, included the alarming information that, if ingested, an initial period of prolonged and violent vomiting and diarrhoea and severe abdominal pain is typically “followed by an apparent recovery, when the victim may ... think his ordeal over. Within a few days death results from kidney and liver failure.”