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 “Wood Ear”
Bleeding Bonnet
Gilled
A minute reddish bonnet that releases dark blood-red juice from its thread-like stem and carries matching dark red edges along its gills. It fruits in mossy litter in both conifer and broadleaf woodland.
Spore print · White
Sickener
Gilled
A vivid scarlet brittlegill of wet conifer woodland and bog moss, with pure white brittle gills, a white chalk-like stipe and a cap skin that peels away almost to the centre.
Spore print · White
Red Pinwheel Marasmius
Gilled
A miniature pinwheel with a rose-pink to reddish-purple grooved cap and a shining blackish thread of a stem, scattered across damp woodland litter.
Spore print · White
Greenfoot Fibrecap
Gilled
A dark, densely shaggy fibrecap whose stipe base is stained a vivid blue-green. A distinctive species of damp mossy conifer woodland and boggy ground.
Spore print · Dull brown
Lemon Disco
Cups & Discs
Swarms of minute lemon-yellow discs scattered in their hundreds across damp barkless hardwood, one of the brightest sights on the autumn woodland floor.
Spore print · White
Club Foot
Gilled
A grey-brown woodland funnel identified at a glance by its markedly swollen, club-shaped stipe base and deeply decurrent creamy-yellow gills.
Spore print · White
Devil's Bolete
Boletes
A massive, pale-capped bolete of warm limestone woodland, with blood-red pores, a squat bulbous stipe covered in a fine red net, and flesh that blues only slowly.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Violet Coral
Corals & Clubs
An unmistakable amethyst to magenta-violet coral fungus forming small tufts of blunt-tipped branches in old grassland and mossy woodland. Its intense colour is unmatched among temperate corals.
Spore print · White
Yellowfoot Dapperling
Gilled
A slim woodland dapperling with a shaggy ochre-brown scaly cap and a stem sheathed below the ring in loose yellow woolly veil, brightest toward the base. Its large spindle-shaped spores give the species its name.
Spore print · White
Bay Cup
Cups & Discs
A dark bay-brown cup with an olive-flushed interior that grows on bare damp soil along woodland banks and path edges. Its scurfy paler exterior and irregular splitting margin are useful field characters.
Spore print · White
Dark Fieldcap
Gilled
A sombre brown woodland fieldcap with a greasy, wrinkling cap and a persistent membranous ring that stains dark from falling spores. It grows on rich, often calcareous soil along shaded woodland paths.
Spore print · Dark brown
Matsutake
Gilled
A dense, heavy, white-fleshed woodland mushroom overlaid with cinnamon-brown fibrous scales, carrying a thick flaring ring and a strongly aromatic odour, fruiting in arcs beneath pine.
Spore print · White
Reindeer Lichen
Other Fungi
A pale ash-grey fruticose lichen forming deep spongy mats of repeatedly forked hollow branches, dominant on tundra, heath and open pine woodland floors.
Spore print · Not applicable
Wrinkled Fieldcap
Gilled
A tall pale fieldcap of fresh woodchip, recognised by its distinctly wrinkled and veined cap surface and the large flaring ring hanging from a white stipe.
Spore print · Dark brown
Rufous Milkcap
Gilled
A deep brick-red milkcap of acid pine and birch woodland, recognised by the sharp little point at the centre of a dry, matt cap. Its white latex stays white and is produced abundantly.
Spore print · Pale cream
False Coral
Corals & Clubs
A pale, tough, coral-like fungus whose flattened branches fuse sideways into fan-shaped or rosette-like masses on woodland soil. It looks like a coral fungus but belongs to the jelly fungus lineage.
Spore print · White
Golden Scruffy Collybia
Gilled
A small, brilliant orange-yellow woodland mushroom whose cap is studded with pointed, granular scales, contrasting with widely spaced white gills on a shaggy yellow stalk.
Spore print · White
Winter Chanterelle
Gilled
A slender brown funnel-shaped chanterelle with shallow grey-lilac forking ridges and a hollow yellow stem, fruiting in mossy conifer woodland late in the season.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Iodine Bolete
Boletes
A pale, dry-capped bolete of warm oak woodland with lemon-yellow pores that do not blue and a stipe base whose flesh carries a distinctive iodoform-like odour.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Charcoal Burner
Gilled
A common woodland brittlegill with a variably purple, green and slate-grey cap, unique in the genus for gills that are soft, greasy and flexible rather than brittle and shattering.
Spore print · White
Variable Webcap
Gilled
A heavy-bodied webcap with a slightly greasy grey-brown cap, violet-tinted young gills and a swollen club-shaped stem base. It forms mycorrhizal partnerships with spruce and pine in northern and montane woodland.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Blue Spot Knight
Gilled
A silky, pure white woodland knight whose cap and stipe base develop distinctive blue-green or pinkish spots and streaks with age. The white sinuate gills and complete absence of a volva place it firmly in Tricholoma.
Spore print · White
Saffrondrop Bonnet
Gilled
A slender woodland bonnet whose broken stem releases vivid saffron-orange latex that stains everything it touches. It is closely tied to beech leaf litter on lime-rich ground.
Spore print · White
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