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Amateurs are often unprepared to identify fungi on the basis of anything other than macroscopic characteristics. This may be an attitude still prevailing from the time when the concept of the species was very much wider than it is today, when knowledge of fungal structure was not as extensive as modern research techniques have now made it. In view of these developments many amateurs are driven, on the other hand, to the false belief that while it was once possible to identify fungi macroscopically it is no longer possible to do so today. The fact of the matter is that it never was possible, that there was only the illusion (sincerely believed, certainly) of correct identification. The identifications were either inexact or actually completely wrong. The re-examination of old herbaria can be extremely surprising! For this reason older flora lists are usually more or less unusable. Certainly there are genera, a large proportion at least, of whose species can still be identified accurately with the help of macroscopic characteristics. Naturally, too, the main emphasis is laid on macroscopic characteristics in this book wherever this is reasonable. There are other genera, however, for which keys based on macroscopic characteristics would only lead to false identifications which would not stand up to close examination.

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