David Arora
American mycologist
David Arora (born October 23, 1952) is an American mycologist, naturalist, and writer. He is the author of two popular books on mushroom identification, Mushrooms Demystified and All That the Rain Promises and More....
Arora first developed an interest in wild mushrooms while growing up in Pasadena, California and organized his first mushroom collecting group while in high school. Later, an idea to start a mushroom club came about, and in 1984 he founded The Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz. He began teaching about wild mushrooms in the early 1970s while living in Santa Cruz, California. Arora has traveled extensively throughout North America and the world, photographing and hunting mushrooms and learning about the mushroom gathering traditions and economies of different cultures.
Mushrooms Demystified was first published in 1979 and was republished in a revised and substantially expanded edition in 1986. Though Mushrooms Demystified encountered some initial resentment and negative reviews among academic mycologists when it first appeared, the mushroom key and descriptions in this work are highly regarded and the book is recommended by a number of mycological authors. The smaller All That the Rain Promises and More... followed in 1991.
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