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 “Old Man of the Woods”
White-egg Bird's Nest
Other Fungi
A squat, crucible-shaped little cup, tawny-ochre and felty outside with a smooth pale interior, holding neat white disc-shaped 'eggs'. The white peridioles set it apart from the grey and black ones of Cyathus.
Spore print · Not applicable (spores held in peridioles)
Mild Milkcap
Gilled
A small, abundant reddish-brown milkcap of beech litter with a dry unzoned cap, crowded pale gills and copious white latex that dries whey-like on the gills. It often fruits in large troops beneath mature beech.
Spore print · Cream to pale buff
Early Morel
Morels & Allies
A thimble-capped spring ascomycete whose longitudinally wrinkled, tan to yellow-brown cap hangs free from the very top of the stalk like a bell. The stalk is stuffed with loose cottony pith rather than being hollow.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Elastic Saddle
Cups & Discs
A slim, graceful saddle fungus with a buff to greyish two-lobed head balanced on a thin, perfectly smooth stalk. The absence of ribs or flutes on the stem is its most useful distinguishing feature.
Spore print · White
Fuzzy Foot
Gilled
A tiny orange-brown bell-shaped mushroom that erupts in enormous swarms across mossy conifer logs, recognised by decurrent veined gills and a tuft of tawny fuzz at the stipe base.
Spore print · White
Dune Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A stinkhorn of sand dunes and light soils, rising from a distinctly violet to pinkish-lilac egg on pink cords. The white stalk carries a pitted, honeycombed head coated in olive spore slime.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spores in the slimy gleba)
Blushing Morel
Morels & Allies
A pale, greyish to yellow-brown morel of mulch and disturbed ground whose ridges and stalk stain pinkish, rusty or ochre-brown where handled or with age. It is one of the earliest-branching lineages in the genus.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Egghead Mottlegill
Gilled
A pale, egg-shaped dung fungus with mottled grey-black gills and, unusually for the genus, a distinct membranous ring on a long slender stipe. The cap is often shiny and wrinkled as it dries.
Spore print · Black
Chanterelle
Gilled
A solid egg-yellow funnel-shaped fungus whose underside carries blunt, forking, decurrent ridges rather than true gills. The flesh is white and fibrous and the odour is faintly of apricots.
Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish
Scarlet Elf Cup
Cups & Discs
A vivid scarlet cup 1-5 cm across, lined with intense red on the inside and whitish and felty on the outside, growing on damp mossy hardwood sticks. It is one of the earliest and most colourful fungi of the year.
Spore print · White
Ringless Honey Mushroom
Gilled
A honey-brown clustered wood fungus that matches the true Honey Mushroom in colour and habit but has no ring at all on its long tapering stem. It swarms in huge tufts around the bases of oaks and other hardwoods.
Spore print · White
Gem-studded Puffball
Puffballs
A small white to buff puffball shaped like an inverted pear, covered in detachable cone-shaped spines that leave a net-like pattern of scars when they fall. It releases spores through a neat apical pore in the top of the head.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spore mass)
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
Sooty Milkcap
Gilled
A dry, matt, sooty grey-brown milkcap of broadleaved woodland whose white latex turns the pale flesh and gills salmon-pink within moments of cutting. That colour reaction is its defining field character.
Spore print · Pale ochre with pinkish tinge
Peach Leaf Curl
Other Fungi
A spring-active sac fungus that turns unfolding peach and nectarine leaves into thick, crinkled, red or purple puckered blades. A whitish bloom of spore-bearing cells later coats the distorted surface.
Spore print · Not applicable
Beech Jellydisc
Jellies
Translucent, gelatinous pinkish-buff discs crowded together on fallen beech wood, often forming knobbly cushions. The soft rubbery texture and pale lilac tint distinguish it from darker jelly fungi.
Spore print · White
Honey Mushroom
Gilled
A clustered honey-coloured woodland fungus with a finely scaly cap, a thick woolly ring and black bootlace-like cords running under the bark of its host. It is one of the most important tree parasites in temperate forests.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Milk-white Brittlegill
Gilled
A large, chalk-white funnel-shaped brittlegill that pushes up through the soil, often emerging still crusted with earth and litter. Its decurrent, widely spaced gills are unusual for the genus.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Sculpted Puffball
Puffballs
A firm white ball of western mountain conifer forests, covered in low pyramidal felty warts each marked by a darker central point. The interior is white and homogeneous before turning to olive-brown powder.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Western Black Elfin Saddle
Cups & Discs
The stout western counterpart of the black elfin saddle, with a large charcoal saddle-shaped head on a thick, deeply chambered pale grey stalk. It fruits in conifer duff along the Pacific coast and inland mountains.
Spore print · White
Western Giant Puffball
Puffballs
A very large white puffball of dry western rangeland, its surface broken into a mosaic of flattened polygonal warts. The interior is uniformly white when young and turns to olive-brown powder with age.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Silky Parchment
Crusts
A small, thin, pale fan-shaped crust with a distinctly silky, finely lined upper surface and a smooth whitish underside. It is most often found on the slim dead branches of hornbeam and its relatives.
Spore print · White
Fire Morel
Morels & Allies
A dark grey, fire-following morel of western conifer burns, coated in fine woolly down when young and often with a thickened, double-walled stalk base. It fruits in quantity in the first spring or two after a wildfire.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Tinder Conk
Polypores
An unmistakable hoof-shaped perennial bracket with a hard grey banded crust and a soft brown fibrous interior. It is one of the classic decay fungi of birch and beech across the northern hemisphere.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish