The milk means that there’s no need to add cream of any stripe to the finished dish, though it looks so pleasing against the green of the finished dish that you might like to anyway. Or pop in some stale bread fried in leftover bacon fat, as White recommends. Thrifty, warming and delicious: what more could you ask for at this time of year? Perfect nettle soup In 1975 Phillips began his life’s major work of photographing and publishing pictures of the world’s garden plants. 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. His first book ‘Wild Flowers of Britain’ was a huge success, selling 400,000 copies in the first year. He wrote more than 30 additional books (often with his co-author Martyn Rix) selling over 4.5 million copies worldwide. Phillips warned against using his guide – or any other – as the sole authority on edible fungi, advising that novices should always have experts identify their finds. Will not identify your mushroom to species level – you will require an identification guidebook to complete this process (see below) Owning all three of these will open up amazing fungal adventures and discovery to novice and improving foragers.

In 1970 he met the book designer David Larkin, for whom he did numerous book covers. It was Larkin who signed him up to publish his Wild Flowers of Britain (1977) with Pan/Macmillan. His entry on the Death Cap, “the most deadly fungus known”, included the alarming information that, if ingested, an initial period of prolonged and violent vomiting and diarrhoea and severe abdominal pain is typically “followed by an apparent recovery, when the victim may ... think his ordeal over. Within a few days death results from kidney and liver failure.” Plants for Europe's Graham Spencer said: "So many great books came from Roger Phillips pen and camera. I have several on my shelf, still referred to regularly." Phillips published books about trees and ferns and wild flowers before he got to mushrooms. He didn’t think the publisher at Pan would go for it. The British, he suggests, had always been funny about fungi. 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. “We were famous for herbs from medieval times, of course,” says Phillips. “But those books tend to refer to mushrooms as ‘the spit of Jesus’ or ‘the fruit of the devil’. Because they grew up from nowhere overnight they were associated with witchcraft.”

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Phillips was best known as an expert on roses and fungi.He was Honorary Garden Manager at Ecclestone Square in London and in the 2010 New Year's Honours Listwas awarded the MBE for services to London Garden Squares. Phillips presented or co-presented two television series based on his books on gardening, The Quest for the Rose (1994, BBC Two) and The 3,000 Mile Garden (1995, PBS), in which he and the US gardener Lesley Land compared and contrasted their gardening methods and preferences. I have mixed opinions on this book. While the emphasis on positive identification is to be applauded, the narrow range covered means I only recommend it in conjunction with wider-ranging fungi guides. In 1975 Roger Phillips began his life’s major work of photographing and publishing pictures of the World’s garden plants. Using modern photographic techniques, Roger set out to develop an encyclopedic collection of books to show the difference between plants as diverse as mosses, roses and annuals. His first book Wild Flowers of Britain was a huge success, selling 400,000 copies in the first year. He has since written 20 additional volumes (often with his co-author Martyn Rix) selling over 4.5million copies worldwide.

Leaves only: legendary forager Roger Phillips’ nettle soup. All thumbnail images by Felicity Cloake. This book will not tell you what species of mushroom you have found, but it is invaluable for placing your find into the correct family of mushrooms, which is always the first step towards identification. Once you know the family group of your mushroom, you can try to match it up visually by comparing it to photographs in full identification guides. You will go mad if you just try to look through guidebook photos for things that look a bit like your specimen! An excellent book for keen mycologists who wish expand their knowledge and identify rare species. Ironically more complete than Collins Complete Guide (above)! 8 Comments Phillips, Roger, and Jacqui Hurst. 1983. Wild food: [a unique photographic guide to finding, cooking and eating wild plants, mushrooms and seaweed]. London: Pan Books.He is best known as an expert on mushrooms and roses who wrote more than forty books on gardening and wild plants and fungi; many with Martyn Rix. [3] [5] He was also an Honorary Garden Manager at Eccleston Square in London, where he lived, [3] [6] and served as chair of the Society for the Protection of London Squares. [2] Alastair Little insists on using only ‘the first young nettle of spring, dazzlingly green and with a unique, peppery flavour’. Includes excellent sections on lichenised fungi, tree identification and common species of particular habitats (eg. Oak woodland, bogs etc)

He presented two six-part television series, 1994's The Quest for the Rose for BBC Television and, in 1995, The 3,000 Mile Garden for PBS. [2] [3] Called up to do National Service in the RAF, he was sent to Canada but resigned his commission, declaring himself a pacifist, and worked in a hospital, at the same time enrolling in night classes in painting at the Chelsea School of Art, later completing the full-time course. He wrote and presented two six-part TV series on gardening (BBC & Channel 4). Famed for his ebullient personality and garish red glasses, he has become a well-recognised figure in the world of gardening. Phillips accepts their compliments modestly while polishing off his stew – a dish I feel I could eat every winter lunchtime and never tire of. There is some discussion of the origin of the chanterelles – Portugal at this time of year – and we then wander to the edge of the market to get a glass of wine and sit and talk about the mulchy beginnings of his first love.

Note: The original version of this book (published in 1981) called “Mushrooms and Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe” was my first proper mushroom book, and remains my favourite. It is still available second hand. It is as good as (and in some ways better than) the 2015 revision that I’m reviewing here, though quite a few of the binomial names it uses are now out of date. The original includes a list of the 25 most common fungi found on British Mycological Society forays, which I think is extremely useful, but it was (sadly) omitted from the revised edition (I’ll blog it some time – and I feature many of its species my Webinar “20 Common, Poisonous, Medicinal and Delicious Mushrooms to Learn Before You Die!” ). The original version was a little less compact. The most comprehensive single-volume guide to the fungi of Britain and Ireland available in the shops So the book is really the beautifully photographed and organised work of many talented mycologists, and perhaps its only flaw was not to mention and accredit the scores of talented mycologists who helped in its making. Occasionally I meet mycologists who are a little grumpy about this, but most are grateful for his talent and contribution to the clarification and popularisation of fungi.