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 Tumor of a plant (Gall)

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

Panaeolus olivaceus

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

Red Edge Brittlestem

Red Edge Brittlestem

Gilled

A delicate brittlestem with a small bell-shaped cap on a long, thread-like white stem, and gills whose edges are flushed pink to reddish. The stem base often tapers into a rooting point.

Spore print · Blackish purple-brown

Wrinkled Peach

Wrinkled Peach

Gilled

An unmistakable rubbery-fleshed mushroom whose apricot to salmon cap is embossed with a raised network of pale ridges, growing on dead elm and other decaying hardwood.

Spore print · Pink

Umbrella Polypore

Umbrella Polypore

Polypores

A large branched cluster bearing dozens of small circular grey-brown caps, each with its own central stalk, growing from an underground tuber near hardwood roots.

Spore print · White

Tuberous Polypore

Tuberous Polypore

Polypores

A stout stalked polypore with a scaly ochre cap, fringed margin and large white decurrent pores, often arising from a hard, stone-like underground mass of soil-bound mycelium.

Spore print · White

Umber-brown Puffball

Umber-brown Puffball

Puffballs

A small pear-shaped puffball of mossy conifer woodland, clothed in slender dark brown spines and opening by a neat apical pore. The interior matures from white to umber-brown powder.

Spore print · Umber to olive-brown

White Pine Blister Rust

White Pine Blister Rust

Other Fungi

A two-host rust that raises orange, blister-like sacs on the bark of five-needle pines and clothes currant leaf undersides with yellow pustules and hair-like brown columns.

Spore print · Not applicable (orange-yellow spore masses)

Viscid Violet Cort

Viscid Violet Cort

Gilled

A slimy violet-capped webcap of eastern North American oak woods that develops pale yellowish spots and streaks as it ages. The viscid stem and rusty spore print confirm the genus.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Variable Oysterling

Variable Oysterling

Gilled

A tiny stalkless white fungus that grows in numbers on the underside of dead twigs and stems, its felted fan-shaped cap paired with a distinctive pale pinkish-brown spore print.

Spore print · Pale pinkish-brown

Terracotta Hedgehog

Terracotta Hedgehog

Toothed

A small orange-buff hedgehog fungus whose cap underside carries crowded brittle spines instead of gills. It is slimmer and distinctly warmer in colour than the common Wood Hedgehog.

Spore print · White to pale cream

St. George's Mushroom

St. George's Mushroom

Gilled

A thick, cream-coloured spring grassland mushroom with crowded white gills, a stout ringless stipe and a strong mealy odour. It often grows in arcs and rings along hedge banks and downland turf.

Spore print · White

Milking Bonnet

Milking Bonnet

Gilled

A small grey-brown bonnet of woodland litter whose slender stem releases a white milky drop when snapped. Blackish and pure white colour forms occur alongside the typical grey.

Spore print · White

Golden Cup

Golden Cup

Cups & Discs

A vivid orange spring cup fungus of conifer duff whose margins and bruised areas stain a distinctive blue-green. It is one of the earliest fungi to appear at the edge of retreating snow.

Spore print · White

Crested Coral

Crested Coral

Corals & Clubs

A small white coral fungus whose branch tips split into fine crests like miniature antlers. It grows from woodland soil and is often blackened at the base by a parasitic fungus.

Spore print · White

Inocybe erubescens

Inocybe erubescens

Gilled

A stout, silky white fibrecap of chalky beech and lime woods that reddens conspicuously where handled or aged. Its spring fruiting and radially split cap are characteristic.

Spore print · Clay brown

Tree Lungwort

Other Fungi

A large leafy lichen whose deeply ridged and pitted lobes resemble lung tissue, growing on the trunks of veteran broadleaf trees in humid, long-established woodland.

Spore print · Not applicable

Common Bonnet

Common Bonnet

Gilled

A tough-stemmed grey-brown bonnet with a radially grooved bell-shaped cap and pink-tinged, cross-veined gills, fruiting in tufts on hardwood stumps for most of the year.

Spore print · White

Bell Morel

Bell Morel

Morels & Allies

A thimble fungus with a smooth to faintly wrinkled brown bell-shaped cap attached only at the top of a slender pale stalk. The free-hanging margin and pith-filled stalk separate it from the true morels.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellow

Deer Shield

Deer Shield

Gilled

The commonest of the shield mushrooms, with a deer-brown silky cap, free gills that turn from white to salmon-pink, and a fibrous ringless stem. It fruits on decaying wood almost year-round.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

Devil's Cigar

Devil's Cigar

Cups & Discs

A rare, cigar-shaped fungus that splits lengthwise into four to seven leathery rays, exposing a pale spore-bearing interior. It is known only from a few counties in Texas and from parts of Japan.

Spore print · White

Bare-toothed Brittlegill

Bare-toothed Brittlegill

Gilled

A firm, muted pinkish-brown brittlegill whose cap skin shrinks back from the rim to expose a fine pale line of gill ends. It partners with oak and beech on well-drained soils.

Spore print · White to very pale cream

Shaggy Parasol

Shaggy Parasol

Gilled

A stout, heavily shaggy relative of the Parasol Mushroom with a smooth unbanded stem, a bulbous base and pale flesh that stains saffron then dull reddish brown where it is cut.

Spore print · White

Reishi

Reishi

Polypores

A hard, kidney-shaped bracket with a strikingly glossy, varnished-looking reddish-mahogany surface, a pale cream pore underside and often a lateral or eccentric stalk.

Spore print · Brown