In addition to Ms. Liberman, a graphic designer, Mr. Lincoff is survived by their son, Noah, and a younger brother, Bennett.

The couple moved to New York in 1968, and Mr. Lincoff set out to write a novel about a draft dodger who waits out the Vietnam War living in Central Park. In his research he got hung up on a question: What would the protagonist eat?

“I took six months off to learn everything there was to know about survival in the city — wild foodwise,” Mr. Lincoff told The New York Times in 1978. “I began to see that every tree, every weed, wasn’t alike. I got into minutiae.”

He and Ms. Liberman led forays to gather edible plants for suppers of acorn burgers, pokeweed shoots and Juneberry pies. In 1971, the couple went on their first walk with the New York Mycological Society. “I said, ‘Let’s promise not to eat anything,’ and we ate nine wild mushrooms that day,” Ms. Liberman recalled. Mr. Lincoff had found his calling.

He steeped himself in mushroom studies and eventually persuaded the New York Botanical Garden to let him teach despite his lack of formal credentials. In 1978, he published a book on toxic and hallucinogenic mushroom poisoning and was soon recruited to write the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, which was published in 1981 and is in its 31st printing. He served for nine years as president of the North American Mycological Association.

(Mr. Lincoff had never tried hallucinogenic mushrooms when he wrote the poisoning book, Ms. Liberman said, but when he finally did, in the 1980s, “He was delighted.” At least once, he found the hallucinogen Gymnopilus junonius, known as “laughing gym,” in his beloved Central Park. “I came out of the park with a big cluster of it and I walked smack into three cops,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is it.’ But they just said, ‘You better be careful if you don’t know those.’ I said, ‘I’m going to take these back and study them.’ ”)