Mushroom Identifier

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 Red-Capped Butter Bolete

Bleeding Oak Crust

Crusts

An oak-loving crust that spreads over dead wood and turns out small hairy tan brackets along its edge, releasing red droplets from a scratch on fresh tissue. It is thinner and more clearly reflexed than its broadleaf relatives.

Spore print · White

Depressed Hedgehog

Depressed Hedgehog

Toothed

A small toothed fungus with an orange-tan cap dimpled at the centre and an underside of crowded brittle spines. It grows in sphagnum and moss beds under conifers.

Spore print · White

Violet Webcap

Violet Webcap

Gilled

A large, sombre, dark violet woodland mushroom with a dry felty cap, violet gills that rust over with maturity, and a cobwebby veil linking cap margin to stem.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Yellowleg Bonnet

Yellowleg Bonnet

Gilled

A small bonnet with a slimy, peelable cap skin and a slender, sticky, bright lemon-yellow stem. The elastic separable pellicle on cap and gill edge is its defining feature.

Spore print · White

Veiled Oyster

Veiled Oyster

Gilled

A stout, thick-fleshed white oyster with a felty-scaly cap surface and a partial veil that leaves a fringed cap margin or a fleeting ring on the off-centre stipe. It fruits singly or in small groups from wounds on standing hardwoods.

Spore print · White

Yellow Stainer

Yellow Stainer

Gilled

A white Agaricus that flushes instant bright chrome-yellow when the cap margin is rubbed or the stem base is cut, and carries a distinctive ink-like odour. Young caps often have a flat-topped, squared-off profile.

Spore print · Dark chocolate-brown

Enoki

Enoki

Gilled

A cold-weather wood-rotter forming dense tufts of small, glossy tawny caps above dark velvety stems. Cultivated strains grown in darkness look completely different: long, pale, thread-thin stems with tiny white caps.

Spore print · White

Brown Roll-rim

Brown Roll-rim

Gilled

A dull ochre-brown mushroom with a persistently inrolled, felty cap margin and decurrent gills that bruise dark brown and peel away from the cap flesh.

Spore print · Yellow-brown to sienna

Velvet Brittlegill

Velvet Brittlegill

Gilled

A firm brittlegill with a dry velvety cap in olive-yellow or violet tones and a white stipe washed with lilac or rose. Both cap and stipe carry a fine powdery bloom.

Spore print · Pale cream

Scurfy Twiglet

Scurfy Twiglet

Gilled

A small tawny-brown mushroom of woodchip beds and fallen twigs, recognised by the whitish scurfy veil flecks along its cap margin and its strongly hygrophanous, fading cap.

Spore print · Pale ochre-brown

Termite Mushroom

Gilled

A giant tropical agaric with a sharply umbonate pale cap and a long tapering root that runs down to the fungus comb of a termite colony.

Spore print · Pinkish cream

Wood Mushroom

Wood Mushroom

Gilled

A graceful white woodland Agaricus with silky cap, free pink-then-brown gills, a large pendulous ring and a marked aniseed aroma.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown

Star Pinkgill

Star Pinkgill

Gilled

A slender grassland pinkgill named for its distinctive cross-shaped spores, with a conical silky-streaked brown cap and pink gills.

Spore print · Pink

Fool's Funnel

Fool's Funnel

Gilled

A small white to buff funnel of lawns and short turf, marked by concentric frost-like zones on the cap and crowded decurrent gills.

Spore print · White

Orange Mosscap

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

Salt-loving Agaricus

Salt-loving Agaricus

Gilled

A dense, thick-fleshed white Agaricus of salty ground, with a cap that cracks into coarse patches, reddening flesh, a sheathing ring and a briny odour.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown

Pearly Webcap

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

Beautiful Bonnet

Beautiful Bonnet

Gilled

A tufted wood bonnet with a pale ochre-brown cap and a striking bright yellow stipe, most often found on beech. The contrast between pale cap and vivid stem base gives it its name.

Spore print · White

Netted Fieldcap

Netted Fieldcap

Gilled

A delicate wood-inhabiting fieldcap with a slimy greyish-lilac cap embossed with a network of raised veins, and rusty-brown gills on a fragile white stipe.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Spring Polypore

Spring Polypore

Polypores

A small centrally stalked polypore with a scaly tan cap edged in coarse hairs and unusually large angular white pores that run down the stem.

Spore print · White

Mycena chlorophos

Mycena chlorophos

Gilled

A minute, translucent grey bonnet of humid Asian and Pacific forests, famous for the pale green light its gills and cap emit after dark.

Spore print · White

Pholiotina rugosa

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

Common Conecap

Common Conecap

Gilled

A fragile grassland mushroom with a narrow conical tawny cap on a very slender striate stipe, distinguished by its rusty cinnamon-brown spore print.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Brown Field Mushroom

Brown Field Mushroom

Gilled

A squat, firm coastal Agaricus with a brown-scaled cap and an exceptionally thick, short stipe. It favours sandy grassland and dune systems near the sea.

Spore print · Dark brown