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.
Pink Oyster
Gilled
A tropical oyster mushroom forming shelved rosettes of bright salmon-pink fan-shaped caps with deeply decurrent gills, fading to buff with age.
Spore print · White to pale pinkish lilac
Pink Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical and subtropical oyster mushroom forming rosettes of thin salmon-pink to rose fans on dead hardwood, the colour fading to buff as the fruit bodies mature.
Spore print · Pale pink to whitish
Pink Waxcap
Gilled
An unmistakable rose-pink to lilac waxcap whose sharply conical cap splits and flares upward like a ballerina's skirt above a white fibrous stem.
Spore print · White
Pink-tipped Coral
Corals & Clubs
A stout, cauliflower-shaped coral fungus with a thick white trunk and crowded branches whose tips are washed pink to wine-red. It grows from soil in broadleaf woodland and is one of the bulkiest of the branched fungi.
Spore print · Pale ochre-yellow
Pinwheel Mushroom
Gilled
A minute white mushroom shaped like a pleated parachute on a wiry black stalk, unique for gills that attach to a free collar around the stipe rather than to the stipe itself.
Spore print · White
Pioppino
Gilled
A clustered wood-dwelling mushroom with a wrinkled tan cap, a firm white stipe bearing a persistent ring, and gills that darken from whitish to tobacco brown. It grows in tiers on poplar and other soft hardwoods.
Spore print · Tobacco brown
Pixie Cup Lichen
Other Fungi
A cup lichen whose stubby grey-green podetia flare into wide goblets with granular, pebbled interiors, rising from a mat of leafy basal scales.
Spore print · Not applicable
Pixie's Parasol
Gilled
A tiny Southern Hemisphere bonnet with a startling sky-blue to turquoise gelatinous cap, attached to rotting wood by a small basal disc. It is a signature fungus of cool, wet temperate rainforest.
Spore print · White
Plantpot Dapperling
Gilled
A vivid lemon-yellow little parasol that appears overnight in the compost of houseplants and greenhouse pots. Its powdery cap opens into a deeply pleated disc on a slender yellow stem and collapses within a day.
Spore print · White
Platterful Mushroom
Gilled
A broad grey-brown mushroom streaked with dark radial fibres, with unusually wide, well-spaced white gills and a stem base tied to conspicuous white cord-like rhizomorphs.
Spore print · White
Pleated Inkcap
Gilled
A tiny, exquisitely pleated grey mushroom that opens like a paper parasol on lawns after rain and collapses by the afternoon. Its gills attach to a collar rather than the stipe.
Spore print · Black
Plum Pockets
Other Fungi
A sac fungus that transforms developing plums and sloes into elongated, hollow, stoneless bladders coated in a grey-white bloom. The distorted fruits hang conspicuously among normal ones.
Spore print · Not applicable
Plums and Custard
Gilled
A striking conifer stump mushroom with a yellow cap densely covered in wine-purple fibrillose scales above bright egg-yellow gills.
Spore print · White
Pluteus admirabilis
Gilled
A very small, delicate golden-yellow shield mushroom with a wrinkled cap centre, a strongly lined margin and free gills that flush pink. It is common on decaying hardwood in eastern North America.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Pluteus thomsonii
Gilled
A small grey-brown shield mushroom whose cap is crossed by a conspicuous network of raised pale veins, with fine ridges continuing onto the stem. It grows on decaying hardwood.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Poplar Fieldcap
Gilled
A clustering trunk-dwelling mushroom with a tan cap that wrinkles and cracks with age, cinnamon-brown gills, and a tough pale stem carrying a persistent spore-stained ring.
Spore print · Dull tobacco brown
Porcelain Fungus
Gilled
Glistening white, almost translucent caps coated in thick slime, clustered high on dead and dying beech, with a distinct ring on the slender white stem.
Spore print · White
Porcini
Boletes
The archetypal stout bolete, with a smooth brown bun-shaped cap, white pores ageing yellow-olive, and a swollen pale stipe netted with fine white reticulation. Flesh stays white and unchanging when cut.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Potato Earthball
Puffballs
A pale, almost smooth earthball that looks like a small buried potato, with a thin rind that cracks into fine scurfy patches. The interior ripens from white to a purple-brown dust.
Spore print · Purple-brown to blackish (spore mass)
Powdered Ruffle Lichen
Other Fungi
A large pale grey lichen with broad ruffled lobes, black eyelash-like cilia along the edges and dense white soredia rimming the wavy margins.
Spore print · Not applicable
Powdery Amanita
Gilled
A small, slender, ringless amanita whose grey-brown cap looks dusted with flour, with a strongly grooved margin and only powdery grey remnants at the slightly swollen base.
Spore print · White
Powdery Brittlegill
Gilled
A medium-sized brittlegill with a matt, slate-blue to grey-green cap covered in a fine frosted bloom. It is common with oak in parks, avenues and open woodland.
Spore print · Cream
Powdery Piggyback
Gilled
A small parasitic mushroom that grows on decaying blackening brittlegills, its rounded white cap soon breaking into a brown powdery mass of asexual spores.
Spore print · White, rarely produced
Primrose Brittlegill
Gilled
A dark purple pine-wood brittlegill named for its primrose-yellow gills, which contrast sharply with the violet-flushed stipe. It is one of the most consistent brittlegills of sandy conifer plantations.
Spore print · Pale cream
Psathyrella aquatica
Gilled
A small brown-capped brittlestem remarkable for producing its fruit bodies fully submerged in flowing cold water, first documented in a spring-fed river in Oregon.
Spore print · Dark brown to blackish brown
Pungent Slippery Jack
Boletes
A dull grey-buff to olive-brown slippery jack whose ringless stalk is finely peppered with brown dots. It gives off an unusually strong, sweet, spicy aroma.
Spore print · Cinnamon-brown
Purple Brittlegill
Gilled
A common brittlegill with a deep purple cap darkening almost to black at the centre, cream gills and a firm white stipe that ages dirty grey.
Spore print · Pale cream
Purple Jellydisc
Jellies
Clusters of rubbery reddish-purple blobs and shallow discs crowding dead beech stumps, alternating between a lumpy asexual form and neat spore-bearing cups.
Spore print · White
Purple-spored Puffball
Puffballs
A large grassland puffball whose mature spore mass turns a distinctive purple-brown and whose sterile base persists through winter as a vase-shaped cup. The skin cracks into polygonal patches as it expands.
Spore print · Purple to purple-brown spore mass
Purplepore Bracket
Polypores
A small, thin, greyish bracket that covers conifer deadwood in dense rows and shows a lilac to violet pore surface when fresh.
Spore print · White
Ragbag Lichen
Other Fungi
A loosely attached grey foliose lichen forming ragged, wavy-edged sheets on conifer and birch branches, with margins crumbled into isidia and soredia.
Spore print · Not applicable
Rainbow Chanterelle
Gilled
A conifer-associated chanterelle whose young cap carries a distinctive pinkish to salmon bloom over orange, contrasting with vivid egg-yolk false gills. It grows with spruce and pine across northern North America.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Ravenel's Bolete
Boletes
An unmistakable bolete wrapped in a bright sulphur-yellow powdery veil that tears to reveal a sticky reddish cap and leaves a cottony yellow ring on the stipe.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Ravenel's Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A North American stinkhorn with a nearly smooth, granular head rather than the honeycombed network of its relatives, rising from a pinkish-purple egg on sawdust and wood chips.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spores in the slimy gleba)
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)
Red Banded Webcap
Gilled
A large brick-coloured birch webcap, instantly known by the two to five bright cinnabar-red belts wrapped around its stout club-shaped stipe.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Red Cage
Stinkhorns
A startling stinkhorn that hatches from a whitish egg as a hollow, spherical cage of coral-red spongy arms, with dark olive spore slime lining the inner faces of the mesh.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Red Cage Fungus
Stinkhorns
A stinkhorn that emerges from a white egg as a hollow, red, net-like sphere, its inner arms smeared with olive-brown spore slime. It is common in mulched garden beds and disturbed ground in warm-temperate regions.
Spore print · Not applicable
Red Coral
Corals & Clubs
A brilliantly red to scarlet branched coral of Pacific conifer forests, growing from deep needle duff. Some forms carry contrasting yellow branch tips.
Spore print · Pale yellow
Red Edge Brittlestem
Gilled
A delicate brittlestem with a small bell-shaped cap on a long, thread-like white stem, and gills whose edges are flushed pink to reddish. The stem base often tapers into a rooting point.
Spore print · Blackish purple-brown
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
Red-belted Conk
Polypores
A tough perennial bracket recognised by a shiny resinous crust banded in red-orange with a cream to white growing edge, and a hard white context. It is among the most abundant decay fungi of conifer logs in northern forests.
Spore print · White
Red-capped Scaber Stalk
Boletes
A robust scaber stalk with a vivid orange-red cap whose skin overhangs the rim, and white flesh that darkens dramatically through wine-red to grey-black when cut.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
Red-mouth Bolete
Boletes
An eastern North American red-pored bolete with a velvety brown cap, dark red pores that flash blue at a touch, and coarse dark red hairs clothing the stipe base.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Red-tinged Lepiota
Gilled
A slim, neatly built parasol whose reddish cuticle splits outward from a dark reddish-brown centre into fine coppery streaks over a white cap. The stem is smooth, white and hollow with a thin movable ring.
Spore print · White
Redlead Roundhead
Gilled
An unmistakable scarlet to orange-red mushroom of woodchip mulch, with a sticky cap, whitish fibrillose stem and dark purple-brown gills.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Reishi
Polypores
A hard, kidney-shaped bracket with a strikingly glossy, varnished-looking reddish-mahogany surface, a pale cream pore underside and often a lateral or eccentric stalk.
Spore print · Brown
Resinous Polypore
Polypores
A broad, soft, velvety bracket that is reddish brown with a thick white growing edge, exudes amber droplets when young, and has a white pore surface that bruises brownish.
Spore print · White