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 Brown Roll-rim

Scaly Webcap

Scaly Webcap

Gilled

A strikingly shaggy webcap covered in dark brown erect scales on both cap and stem, with violet-tinged young gills and a violaceous stem apex. It partners with birch on damp acid soils.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Spiny Puffball

Spiny Puffball

Puffballs

A small round puffball densely armed with long dark brown spines that converge in tufts, leaving a net-like pattern where they fall. It is typically found on rich humus beneath beech.

Spore print · Purple-brown spore mass

White Fibrecap

White Fibrecap

Gilled

A small, silky, ivory-white fibrecap with a sharp central point and gills that age from white to dull clay-brown. Common along shaded woodland paths from midsummer onwards.

Spore print · Snuff-brown

Parasola auricoma

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

Lilac Fibrecap

Lilac Fibrecap

Gilled

A small silky fibrecap washed with lilac to violet tones and topped by a pointed umbo, its gills maturing to dull clay-brown. Frequently found alongside its plain white counterpart.

Spore print · Snuff-brown

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

Curry Milkcap

Curry Milkcap

Gilled

A small dark chestnut-brown milkcap with a tiny pointed umbo and a powerful spicy, curry-like aroma that intensifies as the fruitbody dries. Its watery white latex does not change colour.

Spore print · Pale cream

Cedar-Apple Rust

Other Fungi

A rust fungus that alternates between junipers, where it forms brown galls that push out orange gelatinous horns in spring rain, and apples, where it makes bright orange leaf spots.

Spore print · Not applicable

Azalea Leaf Gall

Azalea Leaf Gall

Other Fungi

A basidiomycete that converts azalea leaves and buds into thick, fleshy, pale green to pink bladder-like galls. Mature galls develop a chalky white bloom of basidiospores before browning and hardening.

Spore print · White (surface bloom)

The Blusher

The Blusher

Gilled

A robust woodland Amanita whose flesh slowly stains wine-pink to reddish-brown wherever it is cut, bruised or nibbled by insects, with a grooved ring and dirty pinkish-grey veil warts.

Spore print · White

Parasol Mushroom

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

Coccora

Coccora

Gilled

A large, handsome Pacific coast amanita with a deep orange-brown cap that usually carries one thick, felty white patch of veil, a lined margin, and a deep sac-like volva.

Spore print · White

Yellowfoot Chanterelle

Yellowfoot Chanterelle

Gilled

A slender late-season funnel with a brown wavy cap, widely spaced grey-yellow forking ridges beneath, and a hollow yellow stipe. It fruits in large troops through moss and conifer litter.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Straw Mushroom

Straw Mushroom

Gilled

A tropical decomposer that emerges as a dark egg wrapped in a membrane, then expands to a grey-brown cap on a ringless stipe seated in a sac-like volva. Its gills turn pink and the spore print is salmon.

Spore print · Salmon pink

Zoned Tooth

Zoned Tooth

Toothed

A thin, tough toothed fungus whose flattened cap is marked with strong concentric bands of pink, white and brown. Neighbouring fruiting bodies often fuse into irregular sheets across the woodland floor.

Spore print · Brown

Skull-shaped Puffball

Skull-shaped Puffball

Puffballs

A large, smooth, pale tan puffball shaped like an inverted skull, with a strongly wrinkled tapering base and an olive-brown mature spore mass. The upper wall flakes away in papery sheets.

Spore print · Olive-brown spore mass

Yellowfoot

Yellowfoot

Gilled

A slender late-season funnel fungus with a brown perforated cap, greyish blunt ridges and a hollow, bright yellow stalk. It carpets mossy conifer floors and well-rotted wood in large troops.

Spore print · White to pale cream

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

Flat Oysterling

Flat Oysterling

Gilled

A small, white to buff, flattened fan-shaped bracket on rotting hardwood, whose brown spore print and finely lined, radiating gills separate it from all the white-spored oyster relatives.

Spore print · Pale brown

Conical Brittlestem

Conical Brittlestem

Gilled

A strikingly tall, thin-stemmed mushroom with a narrow conical cap that dries from dark date-brown to pale tan, its surface set with fine erect bristles visible under a lens.

Spore print · Blackish brown

Chestnut Blight

Chestnut Blight

Other Fungi

A bark-inhabiting sac fungus that forms sunken orange-brown cankers studded with pinhead-sized orange fruiting bodies. Fans of buff mycelium spread beneath the cracked bark of the affected stem.

Spore print · Not applicable

Candy Cap

Candy Cap

Gilled

A rusty orange-brown milkcap of the Pacific coast with a dry, faintly wrinkled cap and thin watery latex. Dried fruitbodies develop a powerful sweet aroma often likened to maple syrup or fenugreek.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Caterpillar Fungus

Caterpillar Fungus

Other Fungi

A parasitic fungus of ghost moth larvae that fills the caterpillar's body and pushes a single narrow dark brown club above the turf. The rigid larva remains attached below ground like a root.

Spore print · Not applicable — spores shed from perithecia

Weeping Widow

Weeping Widow

Gilled

A shaggy tawny-brown grassland mushroom whose blackening gills bead with dark droplets in humid weather. The hairy cap, veil-fringed margin and near-black spore print make it distinctive.

Spore print · Very dark brown to blackish