Book Review
British Fungus Flora, Agarics and Boleti, 3/Bolbitiaceae: Agrocybe, Bolbitius & Conocybe

by R. Watling
Published by H.M.S.O. (Edinburgh) 1982, 139 pp. price eight pound (sterling)

This is the third in a series of specialist mycological texts from H.M.S.O., Edinburgh. Dr Roy Watling is an accomplished expert in the field of taxonomic mycology and has been conducting research into this particular fungal family for some time.

The Bolbitiaceae includes fungi which are difficult to classify and the uninitiated might be excused for privately referring to them collectively as “dull brown jobs! Hence this treatise will be especially welcome by mycologists such as myself who do not have the luxury of close consultation with fellow mycologists, or vast international herbaria close to hand.

The book takes the form of a series of keys and each species is described very fully including details of habitat. Species are grouped together into stirps, a concept which is essentially that of the aggregate species of plant taxonomists. These stirps are delineated one from another using morphological data. The proof of a ‘good’ key is the ease with which a comparative newcomer to the family can satisfactorily arrive at a name for a particular collection. If the key also expresses the natural relationships between the fungi, so much the better. At the time of writing I have not yet had the pleasure of putting these keys to practice, but I do perceive some difficulties which may occur, principally because the species concept used in the book is rather narrow. When discussing the Bolbitiaceae at the Herbette Symposium in 1976, Dr Walting expressed the importance of adopting a broad species concept^* , stating that unless a broad concept was adopted, it would not “obtain the assistance of other botanists going on expeditions. It would seem that Dr Watling had second thoughts about that, since a narrow species concept is adopted in this book. Working in isolation in the Southern Hemisphere and not being an expert on agarics I can see some problems arising should I want to incorporate members of the page 78 Bolbitiaceae into the herbarium here. For example, considering the Agrocybe praecox ‘complex’ as defined in the book, what does one call specimens which do not exactly fit the narrow concept of praecox given on page 16? Another way of expressing this complex might have been to broaden the description yet include scatter diagrams, (for example), which would clearly show that more than one taxon might be involved, which future work (principally involving genetics), might elucidate. As it stands, beginners are going to catalogue all ‘deviations’ from the narrow praecox prescription as paecox in any case, if only so they can retrieve the specimens from their herbaria at a later date. There were other examples which echo this problem in the book.

Another difficulty is made by the fact that there is little indication of how many specimens were examined for each species description and where they are lodged. For example an unnamed taxon related to Conocybe dunensis is described as having much smaller spores than C. dunensis, when in fact there is only more or less 1μm difference in basidiospore length. Also the cap of this related taxon is described as much larger too, but there is only a 5mm difference between it and the largest C. dunensis fruit body cap. Unless there is given some statistical data illustrating this margin of difference, to the uninitiated, the differences seem hardly significant, especially when it is known that spore sizes (at least), vary in reponse to environmental factors.

It is possibly not the policy of the H.M.S.O. publications to have coloured pictures, (it would certainly increase the price), but I feel that the addition of coloured photographs, (after the style of Roger Phillips' recent publication: ‘Mushrooms’), would have made the task of species descriptions so much easier for both author and reader alike. Such descriptions as:

“cap….dark cigar brown to purplish date soon becoming dark milky coffee or snuff brown with darker umber patches drying vinaceous buff

Quite apart from the fact many of us do not regularly partake of snuff or cigars and are therefore quite unfamiliar with the subtle differences this description is meant to convey, how much better it would have been if the author in addition to such a description could add: ‘as illustrated in plate no……’? At a time when bookshops are filled with lavishy illustrated ‘coffee table’ books, it seems a great pity to me that authors of serious works which have taken years to compile, have to ‘make do’ with black and white line illustrations.

These comments should not be taken as serious criticisms of the book. This publication has a text which is clearly laid out, interestingly written, and should be on every mycologists shelf. I look forward to consulting it on my next forays.

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