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.
Caps with radiating blades beneath
Ochre Brittlegill
Gilled
One of the most abundant woodland brittlegills, with a plain dull ochre-yellow cap, pale cream gills and a white stipe that greys distinctly with age and wet weather.
Spore print · Pale cream
Olive Shaggy Parasol
Gilled
The woodland member of the shaggy parasol group, its cap a muted olive-grey to greyish-brown with felty scales that barely stand out against the background.
Spore print · White
Onion-stalk Parasol
Gilled
A soft white parasol with a mealy, pleated cap and a stem that swells into an onion-shaped bulb before tapering to a point. It fruits in crowded clusters on wood chips, mulch and compost, often dozens at a time.
Spore print · White
Orange Bonnet
Gilled
A minute bonnet with a vivid orange to orange-red cap perched on a slender yellow stem, fruiting on wet twigs and fallen debris. Its size is measured in millimetres but its colour is unmistakable.
Spore print · White
Orange Mock Oyster
Gilled
A stalkless bright orange bracket covered in dense woolly hair, with deep orange gills radiating beneath, fruiting in overlapping tiers on dead logs in late autumn.
Spore print · Pinkish buff
Orange Mosscap
Gilled
A minute orange mushroom that dots mossy lawns and banks, with a navel-centred cap, deeply decurrent white gills, and a hair-thin stem.
Spore print · White
Orange Mycena
Gilled
A vividly orange, sticky-capped bonnet that grows in dense tufts on hardwood logs and is instantly recognised by the bright orange edges of its otherwise pale gills.
Spore print · White
Orange Pinwheel
Gilled
A vivid rusty-orange miniature with a pleated, umbrella-like cap held on a wiry blackish thread of a stem, scattered through damp hardwood litter.
Spore print · White
Oyster Rollrim
Gilled
A stalkless ochre to yellow-brown fan on conifer wood, recognised by its inrolled wavy margin and soft, crowded, strongly forked and cross-veined orange-buff gills that separate easily from the flesh.
Spore print · Pale yellowish brown
Pacific Golden Chanterelle
Gilled
The large golden funnel-capped chanterelle of Pacific Northwest conifer forests, with blunt forking ridges instead of true gills running down a tapering stem. Its cap surface is finely fibrillose, often with a pinkish or brownish cast.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Pale Brittlestem
Gilled
A fragile, pale-capped clustering mushroom with a toothed veil fringe on the cap edge, gills that shift from white through grey to purple-brown, and a brittle hollow white stem.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Pale Milkcap
Gilled
A plain, pale pinkish-buff milkcap of beech woods with a smooth, slightly greasy cap, crowded pale gills and copious white latex that does not change colour. Its very lack of markings is its most useful field character.
Spore print · Pale cream
Panaeolus antillarum
Gilled
A comparatively large, pale-capped dung mottlegill of warm regions, with a smooth whitish to cream cap that cracks in dry weather and heavily mottled blackening gills.
Spore print · Black
Panaeolus cyanescens
Gilled
A slender pale-capped dung mottlegill of warm regions whose flesh and stipe stain blue-green where handled, with mottled black gills and a black spore print.
Spore print · Black
Panaeolus olivaceus
Gilled
A small, easily overlooked grassland mottlegill with an olive-tinged hygrophanous cap that often wrinkles as it dries, mottled darkening gills and a black spore print.
Spore print · Black
Parasola auricoma
Gilled
A delicate pleated inkcap of mulch and path edges whose young cap carries scattered stiff brown hairs, visible with a hand lens, that give the species its golden-haired name.
Spore print · Black
Parrot Waxcap
Gilled
A small, wholly glutinous waxcap that emerges bottle-green and then fades through yellow, orange and pink, usually keeping a green flush at the top of the slimy stem.
Spore print · White
Pavement Mushroom
Gilled
An exceptionally tough white Agaricus of hard-packed urban ground, distinguished by its double, sheathing ring and remarkable ability to push up through gravel and paving.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Pear Fibrecap
Gilled
A pale ochre fibrecap that flushes rusty red where handled and carries a strong sweet scent of ripe pears. A robust species of broadleaf woodland on richer soils.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Pearly Parachute
Gilled
A pale, silky-capped litter mushroom of beech woods, faintly washed with lilac-grey and growing in loose tufts from a white woolly base in the leaf mould.
Spore print · White
Pearly Webcap
Gilled
A pale silvery-violet webcap of broadleaf woodland with a silky, pearl-sheened cap and a club-shaped stipe wrapped in a whitish veil sheath.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Peeling Oysterling
Gilled
A stalkless buff to tan bracket-like gilled fungus on dead hardwood, unique for its gelatinous cap skin that stretches like rubber when peeled back from the margin.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Pelargonium Webcap
Gilled
A small, dark, white-frosted webcap with violaceous young gills, a slender girdled stem and a penetrating smell of pelargonium leaves. Typical of mossy birch and conifer woodland.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Peppery Milkcap
Gilled
A chalk-white broadleaf milkcap with extremely crowded, narrow, forking decurrent gills and abundant white latex that floods any cut surface.
Spore print · White
Persistent Waxcap
Gilled
A bright yellow to apricot-orange waxcap with a sharply pointed cap that keeps its colour instead of blackening with age.
Spore print · White
Petticoat Mottlegill
Gilled
A tall, slim dung mushroom with a grey bell-shaped cap edged in white veil fragments and strongly mottled black gills.
Spore print · Black
Phoenix Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
The warm-season oyster mushroom, with paler, thinner, more lung-shaped caps than the common oyster and a more clearly developed lateral stem.
Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey
Pholiotina rugosa
Gilled
A small rusty-spored mushroom of mulch and lawns with a tawny wrinkled cap and, unlike the true conecaps, a distinct movable membranous ring on the slender stipe.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Piggyback Rosegill
Gilled
A small white silky mushroom with a sac-like volva that grows directly out of the decaying caps of Clouded Funnel. Its free gills turn pink and it is one of the few fungicolous agarics.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Pinecone Cap
Gilled
A slender spring mushroom arising from buried pine cones, with a small pale brown cap, whitish widely spaced gills, and a long tawny rooting stem.
Spore print · White
Pink Domecap
Gilled
A small grassland fungus with a neat rose-pink dome-shaped cap and matching pink stipe, contrasting sharply with crowded white gills. The white spore print separates it from the pink-spored grassland species.
Spore print · White
Pink Oyster
Gilled
A tropical oyster mushroom forming shelved rosettes of bright salmon-pink fan-shaped caps with deeply decurrent gills, fading to buff with age.
Spore print · White to pale pinkish lilac
Pink Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical and subtropical oyster mushroom forming rosettes of thin salmon-pink to rose fans on dead hardwood, the colour fading to buff as the fruit bodies mature.
Spore print · Pale pink to whitish
Pink Waxcap
Gilled
An unmistakable rose-pink to lilac waxcap whose sharply conical cap splits and flares upward like a ballerina's skirt above a white fibrous stem.
Spore print · White
Pinwheel Mushroom
Gilled
A minute white mushroom shaped like a pleated parachute on a wiry black stalk, unique for gills that attach to a free collar around the stipe rather than to the stipe itself.
Spore print · White
Pioppino
Gilled
A clustered wood-dwelling mushroom with a wrinkled tan cap, a firm white stipe bearing a persistent ring, and gills that darken from whitish to tobacco brown. It grows in tiers on poplar and other soft hardwoods.
Spore print · Tobacco brown
Pixie's Parasol
Gilled
A tiny Southern Hemisphere bonnet with a startling sky-blue to turquoise gelatinous cap, attached to rotting wood by a small basal disc. It is a signature fungus of cool, wet temperate rainforest.
Spore print · White
Platterful Mushroom
Gilled
A broad grey-brown mushroom streaked with dark radial fibres, with unusually wide, well-spaced white gills and a stem base tied to conspicuous white cord-like rhizomorphs.
Spore print · White
Pleated Inkcap
Gilled
A tiny, exquisitely pleated grey mushroom that opens like a paper parasol on lawns after rain and collapses by the afternoon. Its gills attach to a collar rather than the stipe.
Spore print · Black
Plums and Custard
Gilled
A striking conifer stump mushroom with a yellow cap densely covered in wine-purple fibrillose scales above bright egg-yellow gills.
Spore print · White
Pluteus admirabilis
Gilled
A very small, delicate golden-yellow shield mushroom with a wrinkled cap centre, a strongly lined margin and free gills that flush pink. It is common on decaying hardwood in eastern North America.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Pluteus thomsonii
Gilled
A small grey-brown shield mushroom whose cap is crossed by a conspicuous network of raised pale veins, with fine ridges continuing onto the stem. It grows on decaying hardwood.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Porcelain Fungus
Gilled
Glistening white, almost translucent caps coated in thick slime, clustered high on dead and dying beech, with a distinct ring on the slender white stem.
Spore print · White
Powdery Brittlegill
Gilled
A medium-sized brittlegill with a matt, slate-blue to grey-green cap covered in a fine frosted bloom. It is common with oak in parks, avenues and open woodland.
Spore print · Cream
Powdery Piggyback
Gilled
A small parasitic mushroom that grows on decaying blackening brittlegills, its rounded white cap soon breaking into a brown powdery mass of asexual spores.
Spore print · White, rarely produced
Primrose Brittlegill
Gilled
A dark purple pine-wood brittlegill named for its primrose-yellow gills, which contrast sharply with the violet-flushed stipe. It is one of the most consistent brittlegills of sandy conifer plantations.
Spore print · Pale cream
Psathyrella aquatica
Gilled
A small brown-capped brittlestem remarkable for producing its fruit bodies fully submerged in flowing cold water, first documented in a spring-fed river in Oregon.
Spore print · Dark brown to blackish brown
Purple Brittlegill
Gilled
A common brittlegill with a deep purple cap darkening almost to black at the centre, cream gills and a firm white stipe that ages dirty grey.
Spore print · Pale cream