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.
Showing results for “Orange Moss Omphalina (likely)”
Rooting Cauliflower
Other Fungi
A very large cream rosette of curled, ribbon-like lobes rising from a long tapering rooting base attached to conifer roots in western North America.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Mauve Parachute
Gilled
A jewel-like tropical parachute with a deeply pleated purple-red cap, pale distant gills and a shining black hair of a stem, scattered on fallen twigs and leaves.
Spore print · White
Starfish Fungus
Stinkhorns
A stinkhorn shaped like a sea anemone: a hollow pale stalk expands into a red disc fringed with forked arms, with dark olive spore slime pooled in the centre.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Lantern Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
Recognisable by its distinctly ribbed, angular stalk that ends in a cluster of short arms fused into a lantern-like point, with dark spore slime on the inner arm faces.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Lace Lichen
Other Fungi
A pale greenish lichen that hangs in long lacy, net-like curtains from oak branches in coastal fog country, unmistakable for its mesh of interconnected strands.
Spore print · Not applicable
Frosty Fibrecap
Gilled
A rich chestnut-brown fibrecap whose umbo carries whitish felted veil remnants like a dusting of frost. Frequent on beech-wood paths and calcareous banks.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Golden Chanterelle
Gilled
A golden-yellow funnel-shaped fungus with blunt forking ridges instead of true gills running down a solid tapering stem, and a distinctive apricot-like scent.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
False Death Cap
Gilled
A pale citron-yellow Amanita with flattened buff veil patches, a pendulous ring, an abruptly rimmed turnip-like basal bulb and a distinct raw-potato odour.
Spore print · White
Nitrous Waxcap
Gilled
A drab grey-brown waxcap identified less by colour than by its sharp nitrous, bleach-like smell and fibrous, matt cap.
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
Rooting Shank
Gilled
A tall, slender woodland mushroom with a wrinkled, greasy ochre cap, widely spaced white gills and a long tapering stem that continues underground as a deep root-like tail.
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
Snow Fungus
Jellies
A near-transparent white jelly fungus forming a rosette of thin, frilly, seaweed-like lobes on dead broadleaf branches, drying to a hard yellowish crust and reviving with rain.
Spore print · White
Pepperpot Earthstar
Puffballs
The only earthstar with a spore sac perforated by many mouths and propped on a cluster of little columns, like a pepper pot on legs. A scarce, unmistakable species of dry sandy ground.
Spore print · Brown
Girdled Webcap
Gilled
A slimy webcap named for the striking series of whitish glutinous girdles that band its stem like snakeskin. It grows with willow, poplar and birch on damp, often calcareous ground.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Golden Bootleg
Gilled
A large and striking golden-ochre mushroom of nutrient-rich waste ground, coated in a fine granular powder and carrying a big flaring ring on a sheathed, boot-like stem.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
Common Powderhorn Lichen
Other Fungi
A Cladonia of tree bases and rotting stumps whose slender grey-green podetia taper to blunt points and are coated in fine flour-like soredia, rarely forming cups.
Spore print · Not applicable
Star Rosette Lichen
Other Fungi
A small, neat grey foliose lichen forming star-like rosettes of narrow radiating lobes, usually crowded with black, often frosted apothecia.
Spore print · Not applicable
Mousepee Pinkgill
Gilled
A small grassland pinkgill with an olive-brown cap and a startling blue-green stipe that bruises deeper green, plus a pungent mouse-like smell.
Spore print · Pink
Maple Tar Spot
Other Fungi
An ascomycete that lacquers maple and sycamore leaves with glossy black, tar-like blotches ringed in yellow, then fruits from the fallen leaves the following spring.
Spore print · Not applicable
Gassy Webcap
Gilled
A stout lilac webcap of northern conifer forest with dry silky cap, ochre-saffron marbled flesh and a strong penetrating gas-like smell.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Devil's Matchstick Lichen
Other Fungi
Slender grey stalks rising from a granular crust on shaded rock, each topped by a glossy black spherical head like a burnt match.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a pitted, honeycomb-like ovoid head fused to a hollow pale stalk, forming one continuous cavity from tip to base.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Frosty Funnel
Gilled
A white woodland funnel whose cap carries a silky, frost-like bloom, growing in troops and arcs through deep autumn leaf litter.
Spore print · White to pale cream