Mushroom Identifier

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 Ink Cap

Velvet Bolete

Boletes

A stout pine bolete with a dry, velvety orange-ochre cap and small dark cinnamon pores. The pale yellow flesh usually flushes blue where cut.

Spore print · Olive-brown

Fragile Brittlegill

Fragile Brittlegill

Gilled

A small, extremely fragile brittlegill with a variably purple, wine or olive-centred cap. A hand lens reveals finely serrated gill edges, a rare and diagnostic feature.

Spore print · White

Chicken Fat Mushroom

Chicken Fat Mushroom

Boletes

A slender bright yellow bolete with a slimy, red-streaked cap and cottony veil fragments on the margin. It grows only with eastern white pine, often in large troops.

Spore print · Cinnamon-brown

Golden Scruffy Collybia

Golden Scruffy Collybia

Gilled

A small, brilliant orange-yellow woodland mushroom whose cap is studded with pointed, granular scales, contrasting with widely spaced white gills on a shaggy yellow stalk.

Spore print · White

Gilled Bolete

Gilled Bolete

Boletes

A bolete that wears gills instead of pores: thick, widely spaced, bright golden-yellow blades running down the stipe beneath a dry velvety brown cap.

Spore print · Olive-yellow to yellowish-brown

Beech Milkcap

Beech Milkcap

Gilled

An abundant beechwood milkcap with a slimy olive-grey cap patterned with dark, droplet-like concentric spots. Its copious white latex dries grey on the gills.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Banded Mottlegill

Banded Mottlegill

Gilled

A widespread mottlegill of compost heaps and manured ground, recognised by a hygrophanous reddish-brown cap that dries with a darker band around the margin and a jet-black spore print.

Spore print · Black

Gypsy Mushroom

Gypsy Mushroom

Gilled

A sturdy ochre mushroom with a radially wrinkled cap dusted silvery-white over the centre, rusty-brown gills, and the unusual distinction of a true membranous ring on a webcap.

Spore print · Rusty ochre-brown

Poplar Fieldcap

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

Ornate-stalked Bolete

Ornate-stalked Bolete

Boletes

A firm woodland bolete recognised by its brilliant chrome-yellow stipe covered in a raised network of ridges. Grey to olive caps sit above yellow pores that darken when handled.

Spore print · Olive-brown

Piggyback Rosegill

Piggyback Rosegill

Gilled

A small white silky mushroom with a sac-like volva that grows directly out of the decaying caps of Clouded Funnel. Its free gills turn pink and it is one of the few fungicolous agarics.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

Beech Mushroom

Beech Mushroom

Gilled

A tightly clustered wood mushroom with small tan caps marked by pale mottled spots and firm white stipes fused at a common base, fruiting on beech and other hardwood trunks in autumn.

Spore print · White

False Chanterelle

False Chanterelle

Gilled

A soft orange funnel-capped mushroom with crowded, repeatedly forked, deeply decurrent true gills and a white spore print. Despite the chanterelle-like shape it belongs to the bolete order, not the chanterelles.

Spore print · White to cream

White Dapperling

White Dapperling

Gilled

A clean white grassland mushroom with a smooth unscaled cap, free gills that flush pale pink with age, a movable ring and a slightly swollen base without any sac.

Spore print · White to faintly pinkish

Rosy Wood Mushroom

Rosy Wood Mushroom

Gilled

A delicate, small-statured Agaricus with pinkish-lilac fibrils over a cream cap and a stipe base that flushes chrome yellow when handled. It fruits in woodland and park litter.

Spore print · Dark brown

Spring Brittlestem

Spring Brittlestem

Gilled

An early-season brittlestem with a smooth date-brown cap that dries to greyish buff and a slender, fragile white stem. It appears in groups on rich soil under broadleaved trees.

Spore print · Dark brown

King Oyster Mushroom

King Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

The heaviest of the oyster mushrooms, with a small greyish-tan cap perched on a thick club-shaped white stem, growing from the dead root crowns of umbellifers in dry grassland.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Lepiota subincarnata

Lepiota subincarnata

Gilled

A small pale dapperling with a flesh-pink to tan cap finely broken into concentric scales, girdled fibres on the lower stem and no true ring, common on mulched garden ground.

Spore print · White

Lepiota brunneoincarnata

Lepiota brunneoincarnata

Gilled

A small dapperling of grassy, disturbed ground whose pale cap is broken into concentric zones of pinkish to vinaceous-brown scales, with fibrous girdles on the lower stem and no true ring.

Spore print · White

California Agaricus

California Agaricus

Gilled

A common lawn and garden Agaricus of the Pacific coast, with a pale silky cap, a flaring patch-bearing ring and pale greyish rather than bright pink young gills.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown

Common Bonnet

Common Bonnet

Gilled

A tough-stemmed grey-brown bonnet with a radially grooved bell-shaped cap and pink-tinged, cross-veined gills, fruiting in tufts on hardwood stumps for most of the year.

Spore print · White

Bulbous Honey Fungus

Bulbous Honey Fungus

Gilled

A honey fungus of deciduous woodland recognised by its distinctly swollen club-shaped stipe base, fine yellowish cap scales and fragile cobwebby yellow-fringed ring.

Spore print · White

Foxy Bolete

Foxy Bolete

Boletes

A firm-fleshed conifer scaber stalk with a deep fox-red cap, blackish scabers on a stout white stem, and flesh that greys strongly with blue-green tints at the base.

Spore print · Ochre-brown

Clustered Brittlestem

Clustered Brittlestem

Gilled

A brittlestem that grows in tight bouquets of dozens of slender stems fused at a common base, each carrying a small conical tan cap. The stems are white, hollow and snap cleanly.

Spore print · Dark purple-brown