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 “Not a mushroom/fungus”
American Parasol
Gilled
A stout parasol with concentric reddish-brown scales over a white cap and a spindle-shaped stem, whose flesh and surfaces stain wine-red to reddish-brown wherever they are handled. It fruits in clusters on wood chips, sawdust and old stumps rather than in undisturbed forest soil.
Spore print · White
Destroying Angel
Gilled
An entirely white Amanita with a smooth silky cap, free white gills, a skirt-like ring and a prominent membranous sac around the stem base. Several closely related white species share the name across different continents.
Spore print · White
Admirable Bolete
Boletes
A rich maroon-brown bolete of Pacific Northwest hemlock forest that fruits on and around well-rotted conifer logs, with bright yellow pores and a stout reddish-brown stipe.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Parasola auricoma
Gilled
A delicate pleated inkcap of mulch and path edges whose young cap carries scattered stiff brown hairs, visible with a hand lens, that give the species its golden-haired name.
Spore print · Black
Stalked Puffball-in-Aspic
Puffballs
A small, brilliant red spore ball with star-shaped lips, sheathed in clear jelly and raised on a stalk of tangled gelatinous cords. It grows on bare mossy clay banks in oak-rich hardwood forest.
Spore print · Pale yellowish to whitish
Amethyst Chanterelle
Gilled
A European chanterelle whose egg-yellow cap is dusted with small appressed amethyst to lilac scales. Below, it has the family's usual blunt yellow forking ridges running down a tapering stalk.
Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish
Giant Cypress Agaricus
Gilled
A giant west-coast Agaricus of coastal cypress and pine groves, with a heavy brown-scaled cap that can reach 30 cm and a thick, patchy ring. Fruits in the winter rains.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
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
Appalachian Chanterelle
Gilled
A slender, small chanterelle with a brownish to olive-brown cap contrasting against pale yellow false gills. It is characteristic of hardwood slopes in and around the Appalachian Mountains.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Western Destroying Angel
Gilled
An all-white springtime Amanita of western oak woodland, with free white gills, a thin skirt-like ring and a sac-like membranous volva at the buried stem base.
Spore print · White
Frost's Bolete
Boletes
A vivid lacquered blood-red bolete with dark red pores that weep amber droplets when young, and a deeply pitted, coarsely netted red stipe. Bruises blue instantly.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Butter Bolete
Boletes
A solid golden-pored bolete of warm broadleaf woods, with a dry tan-brown cap, a yellow finely netted stipe and a tapering rooting base. Flesh pale yellow, blueing slowly and weakly.
Spore print · Olive-brown
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
Blue Band Brittlegill
Gilled
A modestly sized conifer brittlegill with a delicately lilac to azure cap dusted with a fine bloom, often paler or ochre-tinted at the centre. Its gills and spore deposit stay close to white.
Spore print · White to palest cream
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)
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
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
Dark Fieldcap
Gilled
A sombre brown woodland fieldcap with a greasy, wrinkling cap and a persistent membranous ring that stains dark from falling spores. It grows on rich, often calcareous soil along shaded woodland paths.
Spore print · Dark brown
False Death Cap
Gilled
A pale citron-yellow Amanita with flattened buff veil patches, a pendulous ring, an abruptly rimmed turnip-like basal bulb and a distinct raw-potato odour.
Spore print · White
Spring Fieldcap
Gilled
An early-season fieldcap of woodchip and grassy path edges, with a pale tan cap, a ring on the stipe, white mycelial cords at the base and a dark brown spore print.
Spore print · Dark snuff-brown
Yellow Patches
Gilled
A small to medium eastern North American amanita with a glossy orange-yellow cap sprinkled with bright chrome-yellow flakes of universal veil. The same yellow material dusts the ring and the swollen stem base.
Spore print · White
Shaggy Bracket
Polypores
A large, thick, coarsely shaggy bracket that starts bright rusty orange and ages through dark brown to black, growing high on the trunks of living broadleaved trees.
Spore print · Yellowish brown
Candy Cap
Gilled
A rusty orange-brown milkcap of the Pacific coast with a dry, faintly wrinkled cap and thin watery latex. Dried fruitbodies develop a powerful sweet aroma often likened to maple syrup or fenugreek.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Grisette
Gilled
A slender grey Amanita with a strongly grooved cap margin, free white gills, no ring at all, and a tall white membranous sac enclosing the stem base.
Spore print · White