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 “Orange Moss Omphalina (likely)”
Black Witches' Butter
Jellies
A gelatinous black fungus forming rubbery cushions and blobs that fuse into wrinkled, brain-like crusts on dead hardwood branches. It swells in wet weather and shrinks to a thin black scab when dry.
Spore print · White
Trumpet Lichen
Other Fungi
A cup lichen with slim, gradually flaring goblets dusted all over in fine flour-like soredia, rising from a mat of small grey-green basal scales.
Spore print · Not applicable
Rooting Polypore
Polypores
A tall stalked polypore that appears to grow from bare ground, its blackish scurfy stem tapering into a long root-like extension that reaches buried hardwood below.
Spore print · White
Conifercone Cap
Gilled
A small tan-buff mushroom that fruits directly from fallen spruce and pine cones, recognised by extremely crowded gills and a hairy, cord-like rooting stem base.
Spore print · White
Giant Club
Corals & Clubs
A conspicuous unbranched club up to 30 cm tall, shaped like a pestle with a broad wrinkled head, ochre-yellow to tan and bruising purple-brown where handled.
Spore print · White to pale ochre
Cedar Cup
Cups & Discs
A half-buried brown cup that erupts through soil beneath cedar trees in spring, splitting its rim into star-like rays around a white inner surface.
Spore print · Whitish
Split Gill
Gilled
A small, tough, hairy white fan growing sideways from dead wood, with gill-like folds split lengthwise down the middle that curl open and shut with the weather.
Spore print · White
Iodine Bolete
Boletes
A pale, dry-capped bolete of warm oak woodland with lemon-yellow pores that do not blue and a stipe base whose flesh carries a distinctive iodoform-like odour.
Spore print · Olive-brown
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
Sandy Stiltball
Puffballs
A striking fungus with a tall, woody, shaggily scaled stalk rising from a buried sac-like volva and topped by a flattened disc of rusty-brown spore powder. It grows on dry, sandy, nutrient-poor soil.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Blistered Cup
Cups & Discs
A stout pale ochre cup that grows in crowded tiers on compost, straw and manured ground, its inner surface swollen into distinctive bubble-like blisters. The margin stays strongly inrolled and the outside is whitish and mealy.
Spore print · White
Shield Dapperling
Gilled
A slender woodland dapperling with an ochre-brown scaly cap, a shaggy fringed margin, and a stem sheathed below the vague ring in loose woolly cotton like a rolled-down sock.
Spore print · White
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)
Leathery Puffball
Puffballs
A large ball with an unusually thick, corky-leathery rind that cracks and splits into stiff star-like lobes as it opens. Found on nutrient-rich, disturbed soil in dry open country.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Crested Coral
Corals & Clubs
A small white coral fungus whose branch tips split into fine crests like miniature antlers. It grows from woodland soil and is often blackened at the base by a parasitic fungus.
Spore print · White
Agaricus crocodilinus
Gilled
A very large white meadow Agaricus whose dry cap cracks into flat plates like crocodile skin. It fruits in coastal grassland and pasture, chiefly in western North America.
Spore print · Dark brown
Coconut Milkcap
Gilled
A small greyish-lilac birch associate with a dry, finely felty cap and decurrent buff gills. Its powerful coconut-like aroma, strongest in drying material, is the defining character.
Spore print · Pale cream
Snakeskin Grisette
Gilled
A large ringless Amanita whose bronze-brown cap carries ragged grey veil patches and whose stem is wrapped in snakeskin-like grey bands above a crumbling volva.
Spore print · White
Paddy Straw Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical Volvariella that emerges from a dark, egg-like universal veil, leaving a thick sac at the stem base beneath a silky grey-brown cap with free pink gills.
Spore print · Pink to salmon pink
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
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
Amethyst Deceiver
Gilled
A small woodland mushroom that is intensely violet when fresh and moist, with thick, widely spaced gills of the same colour and a fibrous, twisted stem. It fades so dramatically as it dries that it can look like a completely different species.
Spore print · White
Dead Man's Fingers
Other Fungi
Swollen black clubs standing upright from decaying hardwood stumps like blackened fingers, tough and carbon-crusted outside with startling white flesh inside. It is a wood-rotting flask fungus present year-round.
Spore print · Black
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