Mushrooms

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The book grew out of his understanding of the propagation of knowledge: “We don’t need governments to connect us, just space where it can happen,” he says at one point.

There are a few mushrooms that fruit in spring whilst the ground is still wet from winter before it dries out from the summer sun. 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. Wedged between her teeth was a mushroom spore, almost certainly a spore of the well-known Cep ( Boletus Edulis). 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. Unsurpassed in both illustrative and descriptive detail, Mushrooms contains over 1,250 photographs, often showing the specimens in various stages of growth, and including all the latest botanical and common names as well as current ecological information on endangered species.Morels and St George’s Mushroom, which both fruit around St George’s day, 23 April, may last for as long as three weeks. This was followed by Trees in Britain (1978), and the success of both titles led Pan/Macmillan to sign up him up to work on a series on garden plants – eventually numbering 12 major volumes and 17 pocket books – with Martyn Rix, a botanist and plantsman whom Phillips had met at Wisley.

Having sold more than 750,000 copies in Europe of his previous title on mushrooms, Roger Phillips new book once again sets the benchmark. 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. There’s nothing like the joy of finding food out in the wild, bringing it home, and transforming it into a sensational supper.

He also collaborated with his wife and plantswoman Nicky Foy on several books, notably Herbs (1990) and A Photographic Garden History (1997) . Meanwhile, years of voluntary work in the communal garden in Eccleston Square, Pimlico, where he lived, led in 1980 to Phillips being asked to take on its management.

He attended St Christopher’s, a progressive vegetarian boarding school in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, where a friend played him American records of Bix Beiderbecke, instilling a lifelong love of jazz. The late Roger Phillips's 'Mushrooms' is an invaluable visual index for chefs and for amateur mycologists looking for information on the fungi species of the UK and beyond. To keen gardeners and plantsmen, the names Phillips and Rix enjoy the same level of recognition as that of any other famous double-act you could mention,” observed Christopher Bailes in The Daily Telegraph, in 2002.Photograph: Sophie Davidson Roger Phillips tended the gardens of Eccleston Square, London, where he lived, for more than 40 years. 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.

He believes not only that we may see a necessary revival in sustainability, but that some of the more miraculous properties of fungi in particular might yet help us to fix the damage already done to the planet. Once early man learned how to control fire, around 1 million years ago, he could cook and dry his food. 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. In later years he enjoyed joining the musician and DJ Cerys Matthews at her Good Life Experience festival in north Wales, leading foragers into the woods and cooking up the results over a fire pit.Dust Jackets are not guaranteed and when still present, they will have various degrees of tear and damage. Used books have different signs of use and might not include supplemental materials such as CDs, Dvds, Access Codes, charts or any other extra material. Featuring colour photographs and vivid descriptions of hundreds of varieties and stages of growth – with footnotes ranging from “edible”, “not edible” and “hallucinogenic”, to “deadly poisonous” and even “edibility unknown”, these were not only essential reference works, but were enlivened by anecdote. In 1975 he began his life’s major work, photographing an encyclopaedic collection of world plants and he has since written 20 additional volumes with combined sales of 4. They gain their supplies of sugars and other organic matter by breaking down the organic matter in dead wood and leaves, rather than direct from the plants as in symbiosis.