Mushroom expert is updated much more frequently. Local field guides are good for getting a general idea of what you’re looking for out there. But if you want to know exactly what you’ve found, running through the whole process on mushroom expert will give you a positive ID. The local mushroom hunters I learned from told me to not trust books as they are almost always out of date in some way.
I guess using two good sources is good. If you get different results you can just not trust that ID
The danger of using a universal guide is it opens more confusion. The death cap in my earlier comment is an example, a Chinese guide will tell you a mushroom that looks like that is good; an Australian guide will tell you it’s deadly
For a differentiation of the two you need to check in more detail, but if you had the local you’d be fine as there’s no safe mushroom that looks like that here and no dangerous one that lives there
Mushroom expert is updated much more frequently. Local field guides are good for getting a general idea of what you’re looking for out there. But if you want to know exactly what you’ve found, running through the whole process on mushroom expert will give you a positive ID. The local mushroom hunters I learned from told me to not trust books as they are almost always out of date in some way.
I guess using two good sources is good. If you get different results you can just not trust that ID
The danger of using a universal guide is it opens more confusion. The death cap in my earlier comment is an example, a Chinese guide will tell you a mushroom that looks like that is good; an Australian guide will tell you it’s deadly
For a differentiation of the two you need to check in more detail, but if you had the local you’d be fine as there’s no safe mushroom that looks like that here and no dangerous one that lives there
With a smaller set identification is easier