I’ve recently realized I really enjoy searching for mushrooms on hikes. Been doing it for a few weeks now and have seen dozens of different kinds of mushrooms, it’s been amazing! But a lot of the areas I’m in have no cell reception and am not able to upload photos to inaturalist for identification. Is there an offline app or should get some books on mushroom identification? Also is inaturalist the best app for online identification, and is a topside and underside image enough for an accurate identification?
It depends on the mushroom. Some are easy to identify, while others may require a spore print and/or microscope. Mushrooms Demystified is a good book for the west coast of the US. It’s heavy on text and not on photos so you will need to study a lot to use it well. It’s also not a field guide.