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”
Red-tinged Lepiota
Gilled
A slim, neatly built parasol whose reddish cuticle splits outward from a dark reddish-brown centre into fine coppery streaks over a white cap. The stem is smooth, white and hollow with a thin movable ring.
Spore print · White
Yellow-staining Mushroom
Gilled
A white Agaricus of hedges and parks whose flesh flushes instant chrome-yellow when rubbed, most vividly in a cut stem base, and which carries a sharp phenolic odour. The young cap is characteristically squared off.
Spore print · Dark brown
Honey Mushroom
Gilled
A clustered honey-coloured woodland fungus with a finely scaly cap, a thick woolly ring and black bootlace-like cords running under the bark of its host. It is one of the most important tree parasites in temperate forests.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Pearly Parachute
Gilled
A pale, silky-capped litter mushroom of beech woods, faintly washed with lilac-grey and growing in loose tufts from a white woolly base in the leaf mould.
Spore print · White
Magpie Inkcap
Gilled
A tall, dramatic inkcap whose blackish-brown cap is broken into a pied pattern by large white felty veil patches. It stands singly in deep beech litter on lime-rich soils and dissolves into black ink within a day.
Spore print · Black
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
Chrome-footed Bolete
Boletes
A striking pink-capped bolete whose white stipe is dotted with pink scabers above and washed brilliant chrome-yellow at the base. The pore surface is white, ageing pink.
Spore print · Pinkish-brown
Iodine Bolete
Boletes
A pale, dry-capped bolete of warm oak woodland with lemon-yellow pores that do not blue and a stipe base whose flesh carries a distinctive iodoform-like odour.
Spore print · Olive-brown
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
Indigo Milkcap
Gilled
An unmistakable milkcap with a silvery indigo-blue cap and gills that bleed dark blue latex, staining green where handled. It forms mycorrhizal partnerships with oaks and pines across eastern North America, Central America and parts of East Asia.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Hygrophorus Milkcap
Gilled
An orange-brown North American milkcap recognised instantly by its very widely spaced, waxy-looking white gills and copious white latex that does not change colour. Its dry, velvety, wrinkled cap adds to the resemblance to a waxcap.
Spore print · White
Fragile Dapperling
Gilled
Perhaps the most insubstantial gilled mushroom in the field guide: a wafer-thin, deeply pleated yellowish-green cap stretched over its gills like a parasol skin, on a stem no thicker than a wire. It collapses to a smear within hours of opening.
Spore print · White
Viscid Violet Cort
Gilled
A slimy violet-capped webcap of eastern North American oak woods that develops pale yellowish spots and streaks as it ages. The viscid stem and rusty spore print confirm the genus.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Haymaker's Mushroom
Gilled
A tiny, extremely common lawn fungus with a hygrophanous date-brown cap that dries pale from the centre, and mottled dark brown gills with pale edges. Its dark brown rather than black spore print separates it from true Panaeolus.
Spore print · Dark brown
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
Agaricus bohusii
Gilled
An unusual Agaricus that fruits in dense caespitose clusters, its caps streaked with dark brown fibrous scales and its stipes crowded and often bent. Favours nitrogen-rich soil under broadleaf trees.
Spore print · Dark brown
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
Elm Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A firm, pale, smooth-capped mushroom that grows from wounds on standing elms and maples, distinguished from true oysters by its stout central-to-eccentric stipe and gills that are notched rather than long-decurrent.
Spore print · White
Caterpillar Fungus
Other Fungi
A parasitic fungus of ghost moth larvae that fills the caterpillar's body and pushes a single narrow dark brown club above the turf. The rigid larva remains attached below ground like a root.
Spore print · Not applicable — spores shed from perithecia
Common Greenshield Lichen
Other Fungi
A broad, flat, apple-green rosette pressed to tree bark, with smooth rounded lobes at the edge and a wrinkled, powder-flecked centre.
Spore print · Not applicable
Desert Shaggy Mane
Puffballs
A tall desert fungus with a woody stalk carrying an elongate, shaggy white capsule that splits to release blackish-brown powder. It persists for months in dry climates long after fruiting.
Spore print · Blackish brown
Basket Fungus
Stinkhorns
A white latticed sphere of spongy arms that hatches from a gelatinous egg and, uniquely, detaches at maturity so the whole basket can be rolled about by wind.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Jack-o'-Lantern
Gilled
A vivid orange clustering mushroom of hardwood stumps with true, sharp-edged, deeply decurrent gills that can glow faintly green in darkness, and a pale spore print.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellowish white
Jack O'Lantern Mushroom
Gilled
A vivid orange gilled mushroom that grows in dense clumps on hardwood stumps and roots, with sharp, deep, decurrent true gills whose edges can glow faintly in darkness.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow