After rain at cooler times of the year, the bush is full of fungi. Fruit-bodies of mushrooms, truffles, puffballs, morels, slime moulds and other larger fungi spring forth in a great variety of shapes and colours. For select Australian fauna and flora, such as birds, reptiles or orchids, there are comprehensive and richly illustrated field guides, which have sufficient text to assist the user in putting names to species encountered. However, existing guides to Australian fungi cover a rather limited number of species, or lack text. Putting names to the multitude of fungi is therefore rather difficult.

A Field Guide to Australian Fungi, in its display of 548 splendid images, offers much promise for naming fungi. Bruce Fuhrer has a well-deserved reputation as a leading fungus photographer, through works such as A FieldCompaniontoAustralianFungi (1985). Indeed, more than fifty images are repeated from his earlier works. Fuhrer has photographed some truly magnificent specimens, of the like that might be seen but once in a lifetime. Many of the fungi have not previously been illustrated in colour, and some interesting tropical fungi are included (such as Boedijnopeziza, with its fringed wineglass fruit-body). Images can be enjoyed solely for their beauty of form and colour: as in the cascading spines of Hericiumcoralloides or in the riot of cap tints among fruit-bodies of Hygrocybearcohastata. Some images depict the truly bizarre, and anyone wanting ideas for aliens need look no further than Aseroe rubra.