Best San Francisco Bay Area Plant and Mushroom Foraging Guide Books

Finding foraging, mycology, or plant biology guidebooks is infamously difficult due to regional variation and change over time as scientists reclassify species. That's why I want to share with you the guidebooks that I regularly use for inspiration and in the field to identify mushrooms, plants, and food. I do have affiliate links here which help support my work, but of course you can find these books other places and maybe even used.

Getting Started

If you don't have iNaturalist or their daughter app, Seek, you're really missing out. No, I'm not sponsored by them, although some folks on my tours must think I am! Both apps are available on iPhone and Android and allow you to not only quickly identify plants, animals, and fungi, but also let you contribute to citizen science. To be clear, this is just a starting point that can be wrong, and it is only useful when you have cell service, but it is an excellent start. On your next walk when you see something interesting, just take a picture and upload it. My brain can only handle a couple new plants and mushrooms per day anyway, so this is a great way to slowly build up your vocabulary and knowledge. When you get home, go ahead and fall down the rabbit hole to learn more.

For the Average Mushroom Enjoyer

David Arora is a mushroom legend. All That the Rain Promises and More is an essential starter mushroom book. Not only is it nearly pocket-sized, but it also has an easy-to-use flow chart that helps beginners identify mushrooms. Like a birding book, it also has a checklist at the back that allows you to track your progress of observing all ~100 species in the book!

For the Mushroom Enthusiast

I have a copy of Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast always crammed in my hiking bag. Let's be clear: it is essentially a textbook — almost too comprehensive. But if you are the type that wants to know every possible mushroom you will encounter in the Bay, this is the book for you. For every mushroom there is an incredibly detailed description of the phenotype, habitat, and lookalikes. There is always at least one very clear photograph, and for the more common mushrooms, many photographs.

For the Forager

The Bay Area Forager is the go-to. This was my first and is still my favorite general foraging book for the Bay Area. My copy is heavily marked up and flipped through! The book contains roughly 100 edible plants and mushrooms in the Bay Area with very clear full color images to boot. I see this book as something I can flip through while riding BART and get inspiration for lifeforms to look for on my next journey.