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.
Stalked Scarlet Cup
Cups & Discs
A miniature scarlet cup carried on a distinct slender white stalk, fruiting on decaying hardwood sticks in warm, moist woodland.
Spore print · White
Star Earthball
Puffballs
A large, hard earthball that develops underground and then bursts upward, tearing its thick rind into stiff pale rays like a clenched hand opening. The exposed spore mass inside is dark brown.
Spore print · Dark brown to blackish (spore mass)
Star Pinkgill
Gilled
A slender grassland pinkgill named for its distinctive cross-shaped spores, with a conical silky-streaked brown cap and pink gills.
Spore print · Pink
Star-spored Fibrecap
Gilled
A chestnut-brown fibrecap with a sharply umbonate, deeply split cap and a stipe ending in an abruptly rimmed bulb. Named for its remarkable star-shaped spores.
Spore print · Dull brown
Starfish Fungus
Stinkhorns
A stinkhorn shaped like a sea anemone: a hollow pale stalk expands into a red disc fringed with forked arms, with dark olive spore slime pooled in the centre.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Stinking Brittlegill
Gilled
A big, stout ochre-brown brittlegill with a slimy cap, a strongly grooved and warty margin and a heavy rancid oily smell, its stout stipe becoming chambered and hollow.
Spore print · Pale cream
Stinking Dapperling
Gilled
A small white dapperling whose cap carries a smooth reddish-brown central disc surrounded by rings of small brown scales. It grows in troops on lawns, verges and woodland margins and has a sharp rubbery odour.
Spore print · White
Stinking Earthfan
Corals & Clubs
An upright, tough, coral-like fungus with purple- to blackish-brown branches ending in flattened, whitish, fan-shaped tips, growing from soil in conifer woodland. Its strong, penetrating odour usually announces it before it is seen.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Stinky Squid
Stinkhorns
A small stinkhorn with three or four tapering orange arms that rise from a short pale stalk and meet at the top, dark olive spore slime coating their inner faces.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Stocking Webcap
Gilled
A firm violet-tinged webcap of beech and oak woodland whose lower stipe is sheathed in a white boot-like veil ending in a crisp upturned rim.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Strap Coral
Corals & Clubs
Small, tongue- or strap-shaped clubs of pale buff to pinkish-ochre, often fruiting in scattered troops through deep conifer needle litter.
Spore print · White to pale pinkish-buff
Straw Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical decomposer that emerges as a dark egg wrapped in a membrane, then expands to a grey-brown cap on a ringless stipe seated in a sac-like volva. Its gills turn pink and the spore print is salmon.
Spore print · Salmon pink
Striated Earthstar
Puffballs
An earthstar recognised by the flaring collar or skirt that spreads beneath its grey spore sac, combined with a sharply grooved, beak-like mouth on a short stalk.
Spore print · Dark brown (spore mass)
Stubble Rosegill
Gilled
A large greasy-capped mushroom of disturbed rich ground, with free gills that turn deep salmon pink and a stipe seated in a conspicuous white sac-like volva but with no ring at all.
Spore print · Salmon pink
Suede Bolete
Boletes
A medium bolete with a dry, suede-textured olive-brown cap over large, bright golden-yellow angular pores. The stipe is ribbed rather than netted and lacks red streaking.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Sulphur Knight
Gilled
A medium-sized woodland knight with an unmistakable sulphur-yellow cap, gills and stipe, and a powerful coal-gas odour. The colour runs right through the flesh, which separates it from most other yellow-tinted Tricholoma species.
Spore print · White
Sulphur Tuft
Gilled
A very common stump fungus forming crowded tufts of small sulphur-yellow caps with rusty centres, sulphur-yellow gills that age greenish then purple-brown, and a purple-brown spore print.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Summer Bolete
Boletes
An early-season relative of the porcini with a dry, velvety, often crazed brown cap and a pale net covering the whole length of the stipe. Flesh is white and unchanging.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Summer Truffle
Other Fungi
A widespread hypogeous ascomycete with a black exterior of large, coarse pyramidal warts and a pale hazel-brown interior broadly marbled with white veins.
Spore print · Not applicable (hypogeous)
Surprise Webcap
Gilled
A drab olive-brown webcap of sandy conifer ground that hides vivid blood-red gills beneath an unremarkable cap, hence the name.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Tan Ear
Cups & Discs
A dull leather-tan ear fungus that opens into a broader, shallower split cup than its relatives, fruiting on humus in deciduous and mixed woodland.
Spore print · White
Tawny Funnel
Gilled
A rusty orange-brown funnel that fruits in dense crowded troops and rings in woodland litter, with very crowded decurrent gills that age to the cap colour.
Spore print · Pale cream
Tawny Grisette
Gilled
A slim, ringless, foxy orange-brown Amanita of acid woodland and heath, with free white gills and a tall white sac at the base stained rusty brown.
Spore print · White
Tear Dropper
Crusts
A thin, closely attached crust fungus on dead conifer wood whose cream to pale ochre surface is roughened with fine spines and often beaded with clear droplets when fresh. It is one of the small resupinate fungi easiest to name by that weeping habit.
Spore print · White
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
The Blusher
Gilled
A robust woodland Amanita whose flesh slowly stains wine-pink to reddish-brown wherever it is cut, bruised or nibbled by insects, with a grooved ring and dirty pinkish-grey veil warts.
Spore print · White
The Deceiver
Gilled
A hugely variable pinkish-tan woodland mushroom named for its shifting appearance, identified by thick, widely spaced flesh-pink gills and a fibrous twisted stem.
Spore print · White
The Prince
Gilled
One of the largest field mushrooms, with a squarish young cap patterned in fine golden-brown fibrous scales, a big pendulous ring and flesh that yellows slowly where handled. It smells strongly of almonds.
Spore print · Dark brown
The Sickener
Gilled
A vivid scarlet brittlegill of damp conifer woodland and sphagnum, with a shiny cap whose skin peels almost to the centre, pure white gills, a white chalky stem and a white spore print.
Spore print · White
Thick-footed Morel
Morels & Allies
The traditional name for the largest yellow morels, distinguished by a swollen, deeply furrowed and chambered stalk base beneath a broad ochre honeycomb cap. Specimens can exceed 25 cm in height.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Tiger Sawgill
Gilled
A tough little funnel-shaped agaric with a cream cap streaked with dark tiger-like scales, deeply decurrent saw-edged gills and a scaly stem, growing on waterlogged willow and poplar.
Spore print · White
Tiger's Eye
Polypores
A small, thin, leathery funnel-shaped polypore on a slender central stalk, its cap silky and banded in concentric rings of rust, ochre and grey-brown with a brown pore surface underneath.
Spore print · Yellowish brown
Toad's Ear
Cups & Discs
The darkest of the ear fungi, forming robust dark brown to almost blackish ear-shaped cups split down one side on woodland soil.
Spore print · White
Toothed Cup
Cups & Discs
A small greyish-buff cup whose margin is cut into neat little teeth, growing on damp bare soil and mossy woodland paths. The toothed rim and pale, dull colouring set it apart from other soil cups.
Spore print · White
Toothed Jelly Fungus
Jellies
A translucent, rubbery, tongue-shaped fungus on rotting conifer wood whose underside is covered in soft gelatinous spines. It is the only jelly fungus with a genuinely toothed fertile surface.
Spore print · White
Torn Fibrecap
Gilled
A small, drab, grey-brown fibrecap whose cap surface breaks up into ragged torn fibrils and scales. A pioneer of sandy tracks, heathland and young conifer plantations.
Spore print · Dull brown
Train Wrecker
Gilled
A tough, cream-coloured agaric patterned with flat brown scales, whose deeply decurrent gills have coarsely sawn edges; it is famous for rotting railway sleepers and other conifer timber.
Spore print · White
Tremella encephala
Jellies
A pale pink to whitish gelatinous blob with brain-like folds, growing on conifer wood alongside its host crust fungus. Cutting one in half reveals a firm white core, a feature no other jelly of this colour shows.
Spore print · White
Tripe Fungus
Jellies
Tiered brackets with a hairy, concentrically zoned grey-brown upper surface and a deeply wrinkled purplish, gelatinous lower surface that gives the species its name.
Spore print · White
Trooping Funnel
Gilled
A tall, large pale buff funnel that forms sweeping troops and fairy rings along woodland edges, keeping a distinct central bump in the funnel.
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
Tuberous Polypore
Polypores
A stout stalked polypore with a scaly ochre cap, fringed margin and large white decurrent pores, often arising from a hard, stone-like underground mass of soil-bound mycelium.
Spore print · White
Tumbling Puffball
Puffballs
A smooth round puffball that sheds its white outer skin to reveal a bronze to purplish-grey shell, hanging from a single tough cord until it breaks free and rolls. Common in open woods and pasture across North America.
Spore print · Olive-brown to dark brown
Turf Mottlegill
Gilled
A small greyish mottlegill of dunged pasture and manured turf, with a hemispherical hygrophanous cap, mottled blackening gills and a slender fragile stipe.
Spore print · Black
Turkey Tail
Polypores
A thin, tough, fan-shaped bracket banded in concentric zones of contrasting colour and texture, growing in overlapping tiers and rosettes on dead hardwood. The underside is a fine white pore surface.
Spore print · White
Two-colored Bolete
Boletes
A handsome eastern North American oak bolete with a rose-red dry cap, bright yellow pores that bruise slowly blue, and a red stipe with a yellow apex and no net.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Ugly Milkcap
Gilled
A dark olive-brown to almost black birch milkcap with a sticky cap, downy inrolled margin and cream gills that stain brown where the white latex dries.
Spore print · Cream
Umber-brown Puffball
Puffballs
A small pear-shaped puffball of mossy conifer woodland, clothed in slender dark brown spines and opening by a neat apical pore. The interior matures from white to umber-brown powder.
Spore print · Umber to olive-brown