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 “Chicken of the Woods”
Blue Spot Knight
Gilled
A silky, pure white woodland knight whose cap and stipe base develop distinctive blue-green or pinkish spots and streaks with age. The white sinuate gills and complete absence of a volva place it firmly in Tricholoma.
Spore print · White
Deadly Dapperling
Gilled
A small, squat dapperling with a pale cap broken into concentric bands of pinkish- to purplish-brown scales and a stem girdled below the ring with matching fibrous bands. It favours grassy urban ground and hedgerows.
Spore print · White
Ochre Spreading Tooth
Toothed
A spreading crust whose surface is packed with short salmon to ochre spines, often with a narrow, white-hairy shelf turned out along the upper edge. It grows on dead broadleaf branches and logs throughout temperate woodland.
Spore print · White
Flowerpot Parasol
Gilled
A slender, brilliant sulphur-yellow mushroom that appears overnight in the pots of houseplants and in greenhouse beds, with a powdery pleated cap and a fragile ringed stem. It collapses within a day, often before anyone notices it opened.
Spore print · White
Aleurodiscus oakesii
Crusts
A corticioid fungus that colonises the outer bark of living oaks, producing sunken, smooth grey patches studded with tiny cup- or disc-shaped fruiting bodies. The smooth, slightly depressed patches on an otherwise rough trunk are the easiest field character.
Spore print · White
Grey Coral
Corals & Clubs
A small, ash-grey to lilac-grey branched coral of woodland soil, with rather thick, blunt-tipped branches and a white spore print.
Spore print · White
Big Blue Pinkgill
Gilled
A stout, deep steel-blue pinkgill of ancient calcareous grassland, with white gills turning pink and a thick blue-tinged stipe.
Spore print · Pink
Yellow-juice Cup
Cups & Discs
A dull grey-brown woodland cup whose brittle flesh releases a watery juice that turns bright yellow within moments of being cut.
Spore print · White
Leafy Brain
Jellies
A brown gelatinous fungus forming rosettes of thin, wavy, leaf-like lobes that look like a clump of seaweed stranded on a conifer stump.
Spore print · White
Goatcheese Webcap
Gilled
A lilac-blue webcap of mossy spruce forest with bluish young gills, whitish-lilac flesh and an unusually strong, far-carrying smell.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Conifer Mazegill
Polypores
A tough rust-brown bracket with a bright orange growing margin and an underside of thick, radiating, ochre-brown gill-like plates.
Spore print · White
Dryad's Saddle
Polypores
A large fan-shaped bracket patterned with concentric brown scales like a pheasant's plumage, set on a short off-centre stem with a black base.
Spore print · White
Oak Mazegill
Polypores
A thick, corky, dull-coloured bracket on oak whose underside is carved into a deep labyrinth of thick-walled winding channels.
Spore print · White
Persistent Waxcap
Gilled
A bright yellow to apricot-orange waxcap with a sharply pointed cap that keeps its colour instead of blackening with age.
Spore print · White
Rosy Crust
Crusts
A thin waxy crust in warm salmon-pink to coral-orange shades, spreading along dead attached twigs of hazel, oak and gorse.
Spore print · White
Cedarwood Waxcap
Gilled
A small pure-white grassland waxcap with broadly decurrent gills and a distinctive scent of cedar pencil shavings.
Spore print · White
Pearly Webcap
Gilled
A pale silvery-violet webcap of broadleaf woodland with a silky, pearl-sheened cap and a club-shaped stipe wrapped in a whitish veil sheath.
Spore print · Rusty brown
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
Netted Crust
Crusts
A soft, whitish-cream crust whose fertile surface is a shallow net of low wrinkles, with free cottony margins that peel away into small flaps.
Spore print · White
Shield Pinkgill
Gilled
A spring-fruiting pinkgill of hedgerows and orchards, with a grey-brown shield-shaped cap and a strict association with rose-family shrubs and trees.
Spore print · Pink
Scaly Rustgill
Gilled
A small to medium tawny-yellow woodland mushroom of conifer debris, with a finely scaly cap, yellow gills that rust with age, and a bright rusty spore print.
Spore print · Rusty orange-brown
Pixie Cup Lichen
Other Fungi
A cup lichen whose stubby grey-green podetia flare into wide goblets with granular, pebbled interiors, rising from a mat of leafy basal scales.
Spore print · Not applicable
Pink Oyster
Gilled
A tropical oyster mushroom forming shelved rosettes of bright salmon-pink fan-shaped caps with deeply decurrent gills, fading to buff with age.
Spore print · White to pale pinkish lilac
Manzanita Bolete
Boletes
A large western North American scaber stalk with a deep red-brown, often sticky cap, coarse black scabers on a white stem, and flesh that greys and blackens when cut.
Spore print · Ochre-brown