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 “Panther Cap”
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
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
Sickener
Gilled
A vivid scarlet brittlegill of wet conifer woodland and bog moss, with pure white brittle gills, a white chalk-like stipe and a cap skin that peels away almost to the centre.
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
Winter Polypore
Polypores
A small, tough, centrally stalked polypore with a dull grey-brown velvety cap and fine white decurrent pores, notable for fruiting in the cold months when little else is out.
Spore print · White
Shiitake
Gilled
A tough-fleshed wood-rotting agaric with a dry brown cap that cracks into a pale crazed pattern, white notched gills and a fibrous, off-centre stem with a fleeting ring zone.
Spore print · White
Spotted Toughshank
Gilled
A firm, long-stemmed woodland mushroom whose cream cap and crowded pale gills develop scattered rust-coloured blotches as it ages. Common in conifer plantations and on heathland litter.
Spore print · Pale pinkish cream
Scarlet Bonnet
Gilled
A small bonnet with a coral-pink to scarlet conical cap that fades towards orange-pink with age, carried on a slender pale stem. It fruits among mosses, grasses and conifer needles.
Spore print · White
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
Yellowing Brittlegill
Gilled
A small, fragile brittlegill whose entire fruiting body — cap, gills, stipe and flesh — discolours a deep honey-yellow with age or handling. It is common in damp mossy conifer woodland.
Spore print · Pale cream
Variable Oysterling
Gilled
A tiny stalkless white fungus that grows in numbers on the underside of dead twigs and stems, its felted fan-shaped cap paired with a distinctive pale pinkish-brown spore print.
Spore print · Pale pinkish-brown
Terracotta Hedgehog
Toothed
A small orange-buff hedgehog fungus whose cap underside carries crowded brittle spines instead of gills. It is slimmer and distinctly warmer in colour than the common Wood Hedgehog.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Grey Shag
Gilled
A tall, fragile inkcap of manure and composted straw, its ovoid grey cap coated in loose woolly veil fibres before it splits, curls and melts away into black ink.
Spore print · Black
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
Girdled Knight
Gilled
A grey willow-associated knight that is unusual in its genus for having a distinct woolly white ring on the stipe. The small fibrillose-scaly cap and faintly yellowing gills complete the picture.
Spore print · White
Green Cracking Russula
Gilled
A firm green brittlegill whose dry cap skin breaks into a mosaic of angular patches over paler flesh, above chalk-white brittle gills and a stout ringless stipe.
Spore print · White to 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
Sheathed Woodtuft
Gilled
A tufted stump mushroom whose hygrophanous cap dries in two tones from the centre out, above a narrow ring and a stem clad below in coarse dark upturned scales.
Spore print · Ochre-brown to cinnamon brown
Russell's Bolete
Boletes
A tall, elegant bolete of eastern oak woods, instantly known by its extraordinarily long stipe carved with deep, ragged, shaggy ridges and by its cracked olive-brown cap.
Spore print · Olive-brown
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-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
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
Yellow Webcap
Gilled
A slimy-capped webcap in warm ochre-yellow, distinguished by pale bluish-violet young gills and a bluish stem apex above a glutinous, banded stem. Common with birch on damp acid soils.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Short-stemmed Russula
Gilled
A large, chalk-white North American brittlegill with a deeply funnelled cap, crowded decurrent gills and a very short stout stipe, often pushing up in mounds through forest duff.
Spore print · White to pale cream