Fungi encyclopedia
A reference for the fungi you actually find
Each entry describes one species the way you meet it in the field — the cap and its surface, what sits underneath, the stipe and its base, the spore print colour, the substrate it fruits from, and the species most often confused with it.
Fleshy caps with a sponge of pores
Painted Suillus
Boletes
A striking bolete clothed in shaggy brick-red scales over a yellow ground, with large radially arranged yellow pores. It grows only with five-needle pines.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Pale Bolete
Boletes
A softly coloured hardwood bolete with a pale buff to whitish cap and white pores that yellow with age and may stain slowly blue-green.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Parasitic Bolete
Boletes
A small olive-yellow bolete that grows nowhere except attached to the base of a common earthball, usually with several fruitbodies clustered around a single host.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Pungent Slippery Jack
Boletes
A dull grey-buff to olive-brown slippery jack whose ringless stalk is finely peppered with brown dots. It gives off an unusually strong, sweet, spicy aroma.
Spore print · Cinnamon-brown
Red Cracking Bolete
Boletes
A small woodland bolete whose dull brown cap cracks into a mosaic with pinkish-red flesh showing in the fissures. Yellow pores bruise blue-green and the stipe is red-streaked.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Red-capped Scaber Stalk
Boletes
A robust scaber stalk with a vivid orange-red cap whose skin overhangs the rim, and white flesh that darkens dramatically through wine-red to grey-black when cut.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
Ruby Bolete
Boletes
A small, brilliantly red-capped bolete of parks and grassy woodland edges, recognised by yellow pores that bruise blue and tiny carrot-orange dots in the stem base.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Scarlet-stemmed Bolete
Boletes
A robust bolete with a pale felted cap, lemon pores that flash blue at a touch, and a stout stalk netted carmine-red over yellow.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Short-stemmed Slippery Jack
Boletes
A dark, heavily glutinous pine bolete on a conspicuously short, stout white stalk that lacks both a ring and obvious glandular dots. Common in coastal and montane pine.
Spore print · Dull cinnamon-brown
Slate Bolete
Boletes
A firm, slate-grey to grey-brown scaber stalk of poplars, with a long rooting stem, dark scabers, and cut flesh that reddens then turns blue-green at the base.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
Slippery Jill
Boletes
A glutinous orange-yellow pine bolete with salmon-tinted pores and a thick, baggy, gelatinous ring that stains brown. Everything about it tends to be sticky.
Spore print · Cinnamon-brown
Suede Bolete
Boletes
A medium bolete with a dry, suede-textured olive-brown cap over large, bright golden-yellow angular pores. The stipe is ribbed rather than netted and lacks red streaking.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Velvet Bolete
Boletes
A stout pine bolete with a dry, velvety orange-ochre cap and small dark cinnamon pores. The pale yellow flesh usually flushes blue where cut.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Violet-gray Bolete
Boletes
A handsome bolete with a deep violet-purple cap and matching stipe, white pores that age pink, and unchanging white flesh. A common oak associate in eastern North America.
Spore print · Pinkish-brown
Weeping Bolete
Boletes
A slippery cinnamon-brown bolete of pine woods whose pale yellow pores exude milky droplets in humid weather, giving it its name. The ringless stalk is dusted with fine brown granular dots.
Spore print · Cinnamon-brown
White Birch Bolete
Boletes
A ghostly pale scaber stalk of wet birch bogs, almost white overall with soft watery flesh and a faint greenish tinge to the cap and stem base.
Spore print · Pale snuff-brown
Zeller's Bolete
Boletes
A striking western North American bolete with a sooty, velvet-textured dark cap that contrasts sharply against bright yellow pores and a red-streaked stem.
Spore print · Olive-brown