BOOKreviews

How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Identifying 29 Wild, Edible Mushrooms Author: Frank Hyman Publisher: Storey Publishing List Price: $16.95 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3DmwQT8 Reviewer: Charlotte Crook Frank Hyman’s newest book, How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying, is a comprehensive field guide to foraging for mushrooms. Hyman wears many hats. He works as a stonesman, a gardener, and a writer. He is a certified mushroom forager who teaches mushroom identification to chefs, arborists, organic farmers, and the general public. Hyman lives in North Carolina, but the information in this book is applicable to anyone, especially beginners.

How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying, released in early October, is a true field guide. Hyman makes it clear that this book is meant to help people identify fungi while they forage. He writes, “My goal is to teach you to clearly identify mushrooms in the field rather than wait to take a spore print at home.” Hyman gives the readers the tools to actually do this, too. The first section of the book defines terms used by foragers and describes commonly used identifiers so even those just starting to forage can understand. The book is colorful and visually engaging, with multiple photos for each species of mushroom. Including these photos makes it even easier to identify while in the field, especially because each picture looks a little different. You can actually see how these fungi look in the wild. Each mushroom gets a few pages of photos and information. There’s even an entire section dedicated to mushrooms to completely avoid. The details for each mushroom are broken down in “digestible” ways. Each section gives you information about where and when you can find them; how to identify them; how to eat, preserve, and farm them; and even some common lookalikes. This is especially helpful for beginners. Because the sections and information are divided up, it’s easy to flip to the page you need and get the details quickly. Hyman also uses tables and charts in such a smart way. He compares and contrasts visually similar mushrooms, but describes each point of how they differ. This is helpful with specific mushrooms in providing an at-a-glance guide. You do not want to mix up the Velvet Foot mushroom with Funeral Bells, so this is where you would turn to identify them. Want an easy way to determine if a mushroom is a delicious morel or a toxic false morel? Slice it in half—“if it’s hollow, you can swallow,” Hyman says. Hyman weaves in a few anecdotes to give the book some humor and personality. Each story teaches you a lesson about foraging and ends with a positive flair.

How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying ends with a description of how to use your mushrooms in the kitchen. Hyman doesn’t outline specific recipes—this is not a cookbook. He instead highlights techniques to prepare mushrooms, which is a helpful. Hyman’s book provides an in-depth guide for every step of the foraging process. Foragers of all skill levels can use this guide, even in the field, to bring them success the next time they hunt for mushrooms.o

Charlotte Crook is a senior journalism major minoring in history at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. She is an intern this fall with Washington Gardener and is passionate about raising house plants (to varying degrees of success). The Hidden Histories of Houseplants: Fascinating Stories of Our Most-Loved Houseplants Authors: Maddie and Alice Bailey Publisher: Hardie Grant List Price: $19.99 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3HosFbW Reviewer: Melena DiNenna The Hidden Histories of House Plants by Maddie and Alice Bailey is a collection of intriguing houseplant profiles that explores exactly what is said in the title: Hidden Histories. Houseplants, as they say in the introduction, are a hot trend recently. But what does the general public really know about these little (or big) organisms sitting in their living room, or window sills, besides how to care for them? The Bailey sisters examine 20 houseplants and tell their stories—not only as pot-bound features for indoor decor, but also as a part of a larger ecosystem when grown in the wild. The book has six chapters: Leaves, Flowers, Inside Plants/Medicinal, In Culture, Interesting Adaptations, and Carnivores. Because of this wide variety, readers learn about plants ranging from the interior design staple String of Pearls to Charles Darwin’s favorite carnivore, Drosera. With each profile, the authors provide its origin and the Latin and common names. The Bailey sisters often delve

into how that plant thrives in the wild and what role it plays in the ecosystem. They also often discuss how that plant became a common houseplant—which sometimes was accidental. My personal favorite was the story behind closed terrariums. Each profile stands on its own, so don’t start each one thinking you know what you’re getting. The characteristics, stories, and facts presented about each plant depend on what is unique to them. For some profiles, they share legends and other old wives’ tales that add to the mystery behind these unique plants. For others, you’ll learn about pollinators or even uses for helping construct a walking bridge over a flooded river (yes, really), which was another personal favorite. While I wish each profile included multiple real photos rather than one artistic rendition of the plant, the stories themselves paint a memorable picture. If you’re interested in learning about houseplants with “unique and unusual behaviors,” this is certainly a great book to check out. o

Melena DiNenna is a journalism student at the University of Maryland, College Park, with minors in Spanish and sustainability studies. She is from Salisbury, MD, and is interning this fall with Washington Gardener.

Common Sense Natural Beekeeping: Sustainable, Bee-Friendly Techniques to Help Your Hives Survive and Thrive Author: Kim Flottum Publisher: Quarry Books List Price: $24.99 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3x301Zn Reviewer: Melinda Thompson The threat to honey bee survival is an issue concerning all gardeners. With Common Sense Natural Beekeeping by Kim Flottum with Stephanie Bruneau, gardeners and beekeepers can learn a more sustainable way of beekeeping to increase the population of honey bees. This book is a thorough guide to caring for bees in a way that puts the bees in control—not the beekeeper. Flottum writes that conventional beekeeping is so focused on honey yields that it ignores the natural ways that bees manage and repopulate themselves. The method of common-sense beekeeping mixes conventional beekeeping with letting the bees “keep themselves.” “Common sense natural beekeeping, respecting the intrinsic value and natural intelligence of the bee, seeks first to learn, then to partner and participate, rather than dominate,” Flottum writes. The book outlines three main sections that are split up into chapters. It’s good for both beginner and long-time beekeepers because it outlines every step of the process and why the bees prefer it. While long-time beekeepers might know some of the information, the book shows how to change the sole purpose of beekeeping from harvesting honey to increasing the bee population. “Where Do Bees Choose to Live” is the first section, which describes where and how bees would live in their natural habitat. This is important because it gives insight into what bees like and how that information can be used when creating a common-sense hive. A recurring theme that is first mentioned in this section is that bees don’t like to be moved around. “Wild bee colonies, of course, are not opened up on a regular basis for inspection and manipulation,” Flottum writes. “The bees carefully structure the hive’s atmosphere along several parameters, including humidity, heat, and nest scent. The integrity of this highly regulated internal environment is disrupted when beekeepers remove combs for inspection.” The second section, titled “Home Sweet Home,” has three chapters that go through the housing preferences, options for a common-sense hive, and other details about the design and placement of the hives. Some of the common-sense hives include the Langstroth hive, which is most common in contemporary beekeeping, the Warré, top bar hives, and more. Not only does this section detail the pros and cons from the viewpoint of the bee, but it also gives a history behind the methods and how to fix them. For example, the Langstroth style of hive is built horizontally despite the fact that bees build their combs vertically. The Warré style was created because Abbé Émile Warré noticed that and placed “new boxes underneath the existing ones.” Each type of common-sense hive has something the bees don’t like, but this book gives ideas for how to improve on these designs. It suggests adding insulation and trying to change the amount of free space left in the box. Flottum repeatedly emphasizes that honey can still be harvested, as long as the beekeeper only takes the excess so the bees have food for the winter. The last section of the book, “Common Sense Natural Beekeeping in Practice,” gives a variety of examples of common-sense beekeeping being used all around the world. This book shows that there is a common bond throughout the world: wanting to save and repopulate the honey bee. o

Melinda Thompson is a senior journalism major at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, with a vocal performance minor and a concentration in women’s studies. She is an intern this fall with Washington Gardener.

Women and Gardens: Obstacles and Opportunities for Women Gardeners Throughout History Authors: Judith Mundlak Taylor, MD and Susan Groag Bell Publisher: Taylorhort Press List Price: $19.99 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3ow0nDV Reviewer: Charlotte Benedetto Is your garden haunted by “Ms. Willmott’s Ghost”? Who is Ms. Willmott and why is her shade hovering about the sea holly and potentilla?

Judith Mundlak Taylor and Susan Groag Bell’s Women and Gardens is revealing: Did you know that some vegetables are “impolite,” and certain women were considered “surplus”? Do you include “weeds” like hellebore or daisy in your compositions, like I do? We have Beth Chatto to thank for the “acceptability” of that, but her contributions have been obscured by traditional histories.

Women and Gardens traces a “Ushaped curve,” like a tulip, a skirt, or a bosom. The history of women and gardens is curvaceous, say the authors; “not a straight line throughout history.” But 21st-century women are still as ignored as ever, it seems. For instance, Podophyllum versipelle ‘Spotty Dotty’ is a deeply desirable plant—it populates Instagram feeds all over the world—but do any of the captions or hashtags credit still-living, still-breeding Oregonian Janet Egger, its originator?

Women and Gardens features profiles and vignettes that are academic, yet conversational—erudite, to be sure, but not snooty. On every page lurks an unfamiliar giantess of accomplishment. An intellectual work, but never elitist or stiff, this is a fine book to take along and read on a lunch break or commuter trip, with selections for lifetime learners throughout. You will find yourself learning, but never being condescended to, on every page. Professors should look at this book as a syllabus selection for college-level surveys of the history of gardens. When I was a little girl, there was one coneflower, and it was purple. Now there are dozens, and in a spectrum of colors and shapes. Dr. Jian Ping Ren, a still-living scientist employed by the PanAmerican Seed Company in California, personally “broadened the range of colors very effectively,” but her work is little known and uncelebrated. Hers is one of the brief, fact-driven entries and profiles of singular women and the singular species they created that fill Women and Gardens. With a readable voice and a highly contemporary point of view, Women and Gardens is packed with hearty, untold stories, drawing the reader in and on. Co-author Groag Bell was a kind of high priestess of women’s-studies texts; she was famous for creating one of the first college-level texts about women’s studies in the 1970s. Pioneers never have it easy, and Mundlak Taylor and Groag Bell remind us of this throughout the text. For example, while women gardeners at Kew received “the same (low) wages as the men,” they had to contend with the “trainloads of salacious men [who] would go to Kew to ogle the women doing their jobs” in trousers. This real-life intersection of sexuality and gardens is completely omitted from contemporary narratives about Kew, but Mundlak Taylor and Groag Bell tell these unknown women’s stories without a grudge or an ideological axe to grind.

Women and Gardens illuminates the dialectic of women gardeners, and the many meaty, hearty stories weave a narrative-driven understanding of the gendered history of women horticultural workers. For millennia, women with families were expected to “grow their own,” and to doctor their families by creating homemade herbal “physicks” and other curatives from the kitchen or yard. Industrialization created the medical profession and from then on, healing was professionalized—and women were displaced, even from midwifery. At this moment, the ”symbiosis between women and their gardens no longer mattered.” This truncation was persistent; it was not until the 1848 American Married Women’s Property Act that the masculine stranglehold on garden works began to crumble. In the English-speaking world, “millions” of women were unable to marry “for lack of a dowry,” and later, for lack of a mate after the bloodbaths of World War 1. These “surplus women” were trained as the horticulturalists of the future by the Countess of Warwick: “a solid livelihood was a lifesaver for them, offering dignity and social acceptance.” Gardening became a safety valve for women who didn’t fit in a tightly controlled society that allowed no “unharnessed” female energy. Jiang En-tian is largely unknown to westerners (the Chinese also love roses), but Women and Gardens does not overlook the jaw-dropping 3,000 rose cultivars En-tian bred in the late 20th century (while simultaneously navigating Chinese regional politics). Australian breeders of their native Banksia and Xerochrysum are included by name and specialty, while Black women and Africans have, sadly, mostly been ignored. Women and Gardens strives for inclusion and circumglobality. American Alice Vonk bred the first snow-white marigold, using elementary Mendelian breeding techniques, and gave Luther Burbank himself a run for his money. Vonk’s triumph of the “little guy” is a story so American in timbre, I can’t believe it hasn’t been made into a feel-good hit starring Frances McDormand. In an earthquake-prone garden halfway across the world, New Zealander Hilda Hemus Ashworth bred the chocolate-purple Lathyrus odoratus that I prefer—but the seed catalogues would have us believe their varieties sprang up from nowhere. Who will tell these women’s stories, if we don’t learn them from Women and Gardens? This book is full of the tales and personalities that make history make sense. It tells the stories of these women who haunt our libraries, plant names, and seed catalogs. Compelling and relevant stories are found in this work—stories that demand to be known. Educators and readers should invest in Women and Gardens to engage with and harness the power of these empowering, previously untold legends.. o

Charlotte Benedetto is a writer, artist, and gardener living in Great Falls, VA. She is enrolled in the Northern Virginia Community College horticulture program and is an intern this fall with Washington Gardener.