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.
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 Peel Fungus
Cups & Discs
Brilliant orange, thin and brittle cups that flatten, split and contort until they look exactly like scattered pieces of orange peel. It fruits in troops on bare compacted soil, track sides and gravelly ground.
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
Orange Tooth
Toothed
A corky ground-dwelling toothed fungus with a white growing rim, a rusty orange body and a stout felted stalk. Cut vertically it shows uniformly orange-brown zoned flesh.
Spore print · Brown
Ornate-stalked Bolete
Boletes
A firm woodland bolete recognised by its brilliant chrome-yellow stipe covered in a raised network of ridges. Grey to olive caps sit above yellow pores that darken when handled.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A shelving, shell-shaped mushroom with white decurrent gills running down a short off-centre stem, growing in overlapping tiers on hardwood trunks. Colour varies from slate-grey and brown to almost white.
Spore print · White to lilac-grey
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
Paddy Straw Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical Volvariella that emerges from a dark, egg-like universal veil, leaving a thick sac at the stem base beneath a silky grey-brown cap with free pink gills.
Spore print · Pink to salmon pink
Painted Suillus
Boletes
A striking bolete clothed in shaggy brick-red scales over a yellow ground, with large radially arranged yellow pores. It grows only with five-needle pines.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Palamino Cup
Cups & Discs
A broad, shallow tan cup fungus with a wavy, often split and outward-curling margin, appearing on rotting hardwood, wood chips and sawdust.
Spore print · White
Pale Bolete
Boletes
A softly coloured hardwood bolete with a pale buff to whitish cap and white pores that yellow with age and may stain slowly blue-green.
Spore print · Olive-brown
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
Panther Cap
Gilled
A brown-capped Amanita speckled with small pure-white warts, with a strongly grooved cap margin, white unchanging flesh, and a stem base finished with an abrupt collar-like rim.
Spore print · White
Parasitic Bolete
Boletes
A small olive-yellow bolete that grows nowhere except attached to the base of a common earthball, usually with several fruitbodies clustered around a single host.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Parasol Mushroom
Gilled
One of the largest European grassland agarics, recognised by its drumstick-shaped young form, shaggy brown cap scales and a snakeskin-patterned stem carrying a thick, movable double ring.
Spore print · White
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
Pear Trellis Rust
Other Fungi
A two-host rust that paints pear leaves with vivid orange spots backed by tiny lattice-like tubes, while producing gelatinous orange horns on juniper stems in spring.
Spore print · Not applicable (orange spore masses)
Pear-shaped Puffball
Puffballs
A small, smooth, pear-shaped puffball that fruits in crowded troops directly on rotting stumps and logs, joined at the base by conspicuous white mycelial cords. It is the only common puffball reliably found on wood.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spore mass)
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
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
Peppery Bolete
Boletes
A small, slender bolete with wide coppery-rust pores running slightly down the stipe and a vivid chrome-yellow base, often found close to Fly Agarics on acid heathy ground.
Spore print · Cinnamon to 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
Pestle Puffball
Puffballs
A tall club- or pestle-shaped puffball with a rounded fertile head raised on a long thick sterile stalk. The head wall breaks away completely at maturity, leaving the stalk standing in the litter.
Spore print · Olive-brown spore mass
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
Pig's Ears
Cups & Discs
A large reddish-brown ascomycete that begins as a deep cup and flattens into a wrinkled, ear-like saucer on decaying conifer wood. Its short ribbed stub of a stalk and pale, scurfy underside separate it from the true cup fungi.
Spore print · White to pale cream
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
Pine Bolete
Boletes
A dark red-brown member of the porcini group tied to pine and spruce, with a bumpy matte cap and a stout stipe bearing a reddish-tinged net over a brown ground.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Pine Conk
Polypores
A woody, perennial bracket that forms hard hoof-shaped conks on the trunks of standing conifers, recognised by its cracked brown upper crust and irregular, maze-like yellow-brown pores.
Spore print · Yellowish brown
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 Crown
Cups & Discs
A large hollow ball that develops underground then bursts through the soil and splits into a crown of rays, revealing a lilac to violet inner surface.
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 Earth Lichen
Other Fungi
A pale grey-white soil crust studded with short white stalks bearing rounded, pale pink heads, common on clay banks and roadside cuttings.
Spore print · Not applicable