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”
Flat-topped Coral
Corals & Clubs
A stout orange-ochre club with a broad, flat, wrinkled top that looks as if it has been sliced off. A conifer-forest species of western and northern regions.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Desert Truffle
Other Fungi
A hypogeous ascomycete of arid steppe that forms pale, smooth-skinned tubers among sun-rose plants, with a reddish-brown gleba veined in white.
Spore print · Not applicable (hypogeous)
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
Hexagonal-pored Polypore
Polypores
A thin, orange-tinted polypore of fallen hardwood twigs whose underside is a striking honeycomb of very large, radially stretched hexagonal pores.
Spore print · White
Greencracked Brittlegill
Gilled
An unmistakable brittlegill whose firm green cap breaks up into a mosaic of angular verrucose patches, paired with white brittle gills and a plain white stipe.
Spore print · White
Giant Funnel
Gilled
A massive white funnel-shaped mushroom of open grassland that forms huge fairy rings, with tough flesh and very crowded decurrent gills.
Spore print · White
Hazel Bolete
Boletes
A scaber stalk of hazel and hornbeam with a distinctly wrinkled, pitted olive-brown cap and white flesh that darkens through pink to near black when cut.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
Coker's Amanita
Gilled
A large, imposing white amanita whose cap is armoured with sharply pointed, downward-curving warts, and whose rooting bulb is ringed with rows of recurved scales.
Spore print · White
Devil's Bolete
Boletes
A massive, pale-capped bolete of warm limestone woodland, with blood-red pores, a squat bulbous stipe covered in a fine red net, and flesh that blues only slowly.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Fairy Inkcap
Gilled
A tiny pleated inkcap that fruits in swarming troops of hundreds around hardwood stumps, its pale buff bonnet-shaped caps carried on thread-thin white stems.
Spore print · Blackish brown
Charcoal Loving Elf Cup
Cups & Discs
A small orange-tan stalked cup with a whitish scalloped rim that appears in troops on burnt ground the spring after a fire.
Spore print · Whitish
Phoenix Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
The warm-season oyster mushroom, with paler, thinner, more lung-shaped caps than the common oyster and a more clearly developed lateral stem.
Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey
Dappled Webcap
Gilled
A striking webcap whose pale cream cap is broken into flat coppery-red scales, with white flesh that yellows and then reddens where cut.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Bruising Webcap
Gilled
A robust webcap with a slimy streaky olive-brown cap whose violet gills and flesh flush deep purple wherever they are rubbed or cut.
Spore print · Rusty brown
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
Red Coral
Corals & Clubs
A brilliantly red to scarlet branched coral of Pacific conifer forests, growing from deep needle duff. Some forms carry contrasting yellow branch tips.
Spore print · Pale yellow
Pungent Slippery Jack
Boletes
A dull grey-buff to olive-brown slippery jack whose ringless stalk is finely peppered with brown dots. It gives off an unusually strong, sweet, spicy aroma.
Spore print · Cinnamon-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)
Crowned Earthstar
Puffballs
A medium-large earthstar with a dark grey, often bloomed spore sac raised on a short stalk above strongly recurved rays, and a silky fibrous mouth with no grooves.
Spore print · Dark brown (spore mass)
Amber Jelly Roll
Jellies
A translucent amber to tawny-brown jelly forming top-shaped blobs hanging from dead willow twigs, each narrowed to a small point of attachment.
Spore print · White
Ash-tree Bolete
Boletes
An unusual bolete found only near ash trees, with an off-centre stipe and a shallow, vein-like yellow pore surface that radiates outward like gill folds.
Spore print · Olive-brown to yellow-brown
Bluing Bolete
Boletes
A pale, shaggy-capped bolete of sandy heathland whose every surface flushes an intense cornflower blue within seconds of being touched or cut.
Spore print · Pale straw yellow
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
Powdery Piggyback
Gilled
A small parasitic mushroom that grows on decaying blackening brittlegills, its rounded white cap soon breaking into a brown powdery mass of asexual spores.
Spore print · White, rarely produced