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 Fly Agaric or European Brown Blusher”
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
Brick Cap
Gilled
A clustering wood-rotting fungus with a brick-red cap fading to buff at the rim, pale gills that age to greyish purple-brown, and a rusty-based stem with only a faint fibrous ring zone.
Spore print · Purple-brown
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
Woolly Tooth
Toothed
A thin, leathery toothed fungus forming zoned cinnamon funnels that fuse into rosettes across mossy conifer floors. Its white spore print separates it from the similar brown-spored Hydnellum species.
Spore print · White
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
Bell Morel
Morels & Allies
A thimble fungus with a smooth to faintly wrinkled brown bell-shaped cap attached only at the top of a slender pale stalk. The free-hanging margin and pith-filled stalk separate it from the true morels.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Blackedge Bonnet
Gilled
A sturdy lilac-brown bonnet whose pale violaceous gills carry sharply contrasting dark purple-black edges. It fruits in troops through beech and other broadleaf litter and smells strongly of radish.
Spore print · White
Big Red False Morel
Morels & Allies
One of the largest false morels, with a dark reddish-brown head packed with deep interconnected wrinkles on a massive white furrowed stalk. It fruits in spring in bottomland hardwood forest of the central and southeastern United States.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
Beautiful Bonnet
Gilled
A tufted wood bonnet with a pale ochre-brown cap and a striking bright yellow stipe, most often found on beech. The contrast between pale cap and vivid stem base gives it its name.
Spore print · White
Heterobasidion annosum
Polypores
A perennial, irregularly shelving polypore found at the root collar and stump surfaces of conifers, recognised by its rough red-brown to blackish upper crust, sharp white growing margin and cream pore surface.
Spore print · White
Wood Ear
Jellies
A gelatinous, tan to reddish-brown bracket shaped remarkably like a human ear, with a veined and folded inner surface and a minutely velvety outer face. It is strongly associated with elder and fruits through the coldest months.
Spore print · White
Maitake
Polypores
A large clustered polypore that builds a rosette of grey-brown, fan- to spoon-shaped fronds from a branched white stalk at the foot of old oaks. The undersides are covered in tiny white pores rather than gills.
Spore print · White
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
Wet Rot Fungus
Crusts
A thin, closely attached crust that starts creamy white and matures to olive- or umber-brown, its surface roughened with small warts and lumps. It grows on persistently wet dead wood outdoors and on damp timber indoors.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Dead Man's Foot
Puffballs
A large, club- or foot-shaped fungus whose interior is packed with pea-sized chambers set in dark jelly, ripening from the top down into rusty brown dust. It grows on the poorest, most compacted ground.
Spore print · Cinnamon to rusty brown (spore mass)
Frosty Webcap
Gilled
A small, slender birch webcap whose dark greyish-brown cap is dusted with fine white fibrils like hoar frost. The slim stem carries whitish veil girdles above a hygrophanous, umbonate cap.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Chestnut Dapperling
Gilled
A small woodland dapperling whose pale cap is broken into fine, dark chestnut-brown granular scales arranged in rough concentric rings, on a slender stem sheathed with the same rusty scaling below a vanishing ring.
Spore print · White
Field Mushroom
Gilled
The classic white mushroom of old pasture, with a dry silky cap, a thin fragile ring and gills that are a vivid bright pink when young before turning chocolate-brown. It fruits in troops and rings after rain.
Spore print · Dark brown
False Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a reddish to dark brown head thrown into irregular convoluted lobes like a brain or a crumpled turban, with no ridge-and-pit honeycomb. Cut vertically it is irregularly chambered rather than one clean hollow.
Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish
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)
Veined Cup
Cups & Discs
A broad, almost stalkless brown disc whose inner surface is scored with prominent radiating veins, found on damp ground in spring. A strong chlorine-like odour and the pale, mealy outer surface make it easy to recognise.
Spore print · White to cream
Velvet Milkcap
Gilled
A striking dark chocolate-brown milkcap with a dry velvety, wrinkled cap and startlingly white gills, whose white latex stains the flesh salmon-pink. It grows with spruce and fir in mossy northern and montane conifer forest.
Spore print · Pale yellow to ochre
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
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