Book ID: 108115
Vukojevic, Jelena and Ibrahim Hadziz
Atlas of Mushrooms and International Dictionary of Mushroom Folk Names. 2013. illus. 496 p. gr8vo. - Introduction in English & Serbian, figure captions in Serbian, Czech, English, French, Croatian, German, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and Latin.
The Atlas of Mushrooms and International Dictionary of Mushroom Folk Names is an encyclopaedic publication, the contents of which is the following:
- the Atlas is a catalogue or a register of almost all macroscopic species of fungi (the fruiting bodies or stromata are visible by eye) that have been discovered on the territories of Serbia and Montenegro so far, presenting thus 1050 species and varieties;
- all species are presented both by their scientific and serbian folk names (1110), and also by folk names in various European languages: Czech (828), English (574), French (873), Croatian (876), Italian (414), German (1016), Russian (924), Slovenian (741) and Spanish (371). The total number of recorded folk names is impressive, amounting to 7727. Such or even similar synthesis of myconyms is unprecedented so far in any mycological handbook, and we hope that our effort shall facilitate communication between mycologists even when using folk names. In order to collect folk names in various languages, the authors have researched all available mycological literature and numerous websites;
- each species is presented in the Atlas by a colour photograph. Its role is to provide the Atlas users with a visual information, in addition to the written one, on the appearance of the species in questions, which is, in a way, an introduction to the identification key. Presenting the species by their names in various languages as well as by photographs is a novelty compared to similar publications in Serbia and abroad;
- even though the Atlas is not taxonomically oriented, we found it was useful to present the taxonomic overview of higher taxons of the fungi kingdom (class, order, family) so that the reader is informed of the taxonomic association of the given species;
- the Atlas finishes with a so-called Appendix, listing the names of the notion fungus/mushroom in 60 different langauges, as well as with an Glossary encompassing some 900 nouns, adjectives, suffixes and prefixes in ancient Greek and Latin used in science to name the representatives of all five kingdoms and consequently for naming the species of the fungal kingdom. We find that this chapter will contribute to a better understanding of the etymology of a considerable number of scientific fungi names, and provide information of the deeper origin of naming the fungi and their meaning.