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 “Red-capped Scaber Stalk”
Bleeding Broadleaf Crust
Crusts
A thick, pale, mostly flat crust that hugs dead broadleaf branches and releases a bright red juice when scratched while fresh. Its surface is smooth to slightly lumpy, with barely any turned-out edge.
Spore print · White
Snow False Morel
Morels & Allies
A squat, heavy false morel with a tan to yellow-brown head of rounded brain-like folds and a short, thick, deeply chambered white stalk. It fruits beside melting snowbanks in western mountain conifer forest.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
Rayed Earthstar
Puffballs
A small, neat earthstar that stands on exactly four arched rays rising from a pale mycelial cup, with a stalked grey sac whose mouth sits in a clearly outlined pale court.
Spore print · Dark brown (spore mass)
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
Yellow Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a pale tan to yellow-ochre honeycombed head, its pits irregular and its ridges paler than the pits. Head and stalk are joined at the base and the whole fruiting body is hollow from tip to foot.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Green Elfcup
Cups & Discs
A tiny turquoise cup fungus whose mycelium stains rotting hardwood a vivid blue-green. The stain is visible all year, while the small stalked saucers appear mainly in damp autumn weather.
Spore print · White
Ash Dieback
Cups & Discs
A minute white cup fungus that fruits in summer on the blackened leaf stalks of ash lying in the litter. Its asexual stage produces diamond-shaped bark lesions and crown dieback on living ash trees.
Spore print · White
Bleeding Oak Crust
Crusts
An oak-loving crust that spreads over dead wood and turns out small hairy tan brackets along its edge, releasing red droplets from a scratch on fresh tissue. It is thinner and more clearly reflexed than its broadleaf relatives.
Spore print · White
Hemlock Varnish Shelf
Polypores
A shiny, varnish-coated bracket with a mahogany-red upper surface and creamy white pore layer, fruiting almost exclusively on dead eastern hemlock. Its lacquered finish and conifer substrate make it one of the most recognisable shelf fungi of northern forests.
Spore print · Brown
Bull-nose False Morel
Morels & Allies
A stout spring ascomycete with a bulging tan-brown head thrown into broad rounded lobes and folds, perched on a thick chambered white stalk. Its smoothly convoluted surface, without any true pits and ridges, sets it apart from the true morels.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Spring King Bolete
Boletes
A western North American porcini relative that fruits in clustered groups near melting snow in mountain conifer forest, often half-buried with a soil-crusted reddish-brown cap.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Violet Webcap
Gilled
A large, sombre, dark violet woodland mushroom with a dry felty cap, violet gills that rust over with maturity, and a cobwebby veil linking cap margin to stem.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Yellowleg Bonnet
Gilled
A small bonnet with a slimy, peelable cap skin and a slender, sticky, bright lemon-yellow stem. The elastic separable pellicle on cap and gill edge is its defining feature.
Spore print · White
Veiled Oyster
Gilled
A stout, thick-fleshed white oyster with a felty-scaly cap surface and a partial veil that leaves a fringed cap margin or a fleeting ring on the off-centre stipe. It fruits singly or in small groups from wounds on standing hardwoods.
Spore print · White
Yellow Stainer
Gilled
A white Agaricus that flushes instant bright chrome-yellow when the cap margin is rubbed or the stem base is cut, and carries a distinctive ink-like odour. Young caps often have a flat-topped, squared-off profile.
Spore print · Dark chocolate-brown
Enoki
Gilled
A cold-weather wood-rotter forming dense tufts of small, glossy tawny caps above dark velvety stems. Cultivated strains grown in darkness look completely different: long, pale, thread-thin stems with tiny white caps.
Spore print · White
Brown Roll-rim
Gilled
A dull ochre-brown mushroom with a persistently inrolled, felty cap margin and decurrent gills that bruise dark brown and peel away from the cap flesh.
Spore print · Yellow-brown to sienna
Velvet Brittlegill
Gilled
A firm brittlegill with a dry velvety cap in olive-yellow or violet tones and a white stipe washed with lilac or rose. Both cap and stipe carry a fine powdery bloom.
Spore print · Pale cream
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
Wood Mushroom
Gilled
A graceful white woodland Agaricus with silky cap, free pink-then-brown gills, a large pendulous ring and a marked aniseed aroma.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Termite Mushroom
Gilled
A giant tropical agaric with a sharply umbonate pale cap and a long tapering root that runs down to the fungus comb of a termite colony.
Spore print · Pinkish cream
Star Pinkgill
Gilled
A slender grassland pinkgill named for its distinctive cross-shaped spores, with a conical silky-streaked brown cap and pink gills.
Spore print · Pink
Larch Bolete
Boletes
A glossy golden-brown bolete found only under larch, with a slimy cap, yellow pores that bruise brownish, and a ring on the stem.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
Fool's Funnel
Gilled
A small white to buff funnel of lawns and short turf, marked by concentric frost-like zones on the cap and crowded decurrent gills.
Spore print · White