A New Guide to Kansas Mushrooms

Description

A New Guide to Kansas Mushrooms
by Sherry Kay

ISBN: 9780700633067
Softcover, new
revised: September 2022

Brief Description:
Originally published in 1993, A Guide to Kansas Mushrooms went out of print
in 2017. Original author Richard Kay suggested his wife, Sherry Kay, could
assume the undertaking of revising the book, collaborating with him working
as a consultant. After Richard’s death in 2018, Sherry later added two
coauthors, Benjamin Sikes and Caleb Morse, to complete the task. Kay,
Sikes, and Morse have revised this new edition to account for the variety
of ways mycology has changed in the last twenty-five years, while holding
to its original purpose as a guide for active mushroomers. Primarily, A New
Guide to Kansas Mushrooms highlights the upheaval in taxonomy caused by
advances in molecular genetics: an estimated 25 percent of fungal names
included in the original guide have changed since 1993. Second, the list of
mushrooms found in Kansas has expanded and the new edition adds 50 species
to the 150 described in the original guide. All anthology entries have been
updated to reflect these changes in the field, and the essays have also
been edited, reduced, or expanded to include updated information as well as
brand-new material. The outdated genus-level classification of fungi has
been replaced by two cladograms—diagrams that illustrate how organisms
branch off from their last common ancestors. This revised edition provides
a wealth of new material on Kansas mushrooms that will aid and fascinate
both newbies and seasoned mycophiles and includes information on online
resources and notes on how to grow mushrooms in Kansas. While the book
fully treats 200 species, readers will be able to identify 320 different
macrofungi using the keys and discussions. Additionally, this book
introduces readers to fascinating, common slime molds (myxomycetes). A New
Guide to Kansas Mushrooms incorporates new understanding of fungal taxonomy
that has been a lrgely unearthed by genetic tools over the past three
decades, highlights key taxa, and includes a life list of the more than
1,200 species now cataloged from Kansas—nearly twice the number known at
the time of the first edition.