Mushroom Identifier

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 Clustered Bonnet

Pink-tipped Coral

Corals & Clubs

A stout, cauliflower-shaped coral fungus with a thick white trunk and crowded branches whose tips are washed pink to wine-red. It grows from soil in broadleaf woodland and is one of the bulkiest of the branched fungi.

Spore print · Pale ochre-yellow

Pixie's Parasol

Gilled

A tiny Southern Hemisphere bonnet with a startling sky-blue to turquoise gelatinous cap, attached to rotting wood by a small basal disc. It is a signature fungus of cool, wet temperate rainforest.

Spore print · White

Mycena chlorophos

Gilled

A minute, translucent grey bonnet of humid Asian and Pacific forests, famous for the pale green light its gills and cap emit after dark.

Spore print · White

Fragrant Chanterelle

Gilled

A vivid orange trumpet-shaped fungus that grows in dense fused clusters from a common base, with a nearly smooth underside and a powerful sweet aroma.

Spore print · Pale yellow to cream

Scaly Inkcap

Gilled

A clustered inkcap whose buff-brown bell-shaped cap is decorated with felty whitish veil patches. It fruits in tufts on hardwood stumps and buried wood.

Spore print · Black

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

Flame Mycena

Gilled

A brilliant scarlet to flame-orange bonnet of western North American conifer duff, with orange gills edged in red and a tuft of orange fibrils at the stem base.

Spore print · White

Fairy Inkcap

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

Yellow-gilled Gymnopilus

Gilled

A colourful rustgill with a purplish-red, fibrillose-scaly cap and brilliant yellow gills that mature to rust, commonly clustered on wood chip beds.

Spore print · Rusty orange-brown

Parasitic Bolete

Boletes

A small olive-yellow bolete that grows nowhere except attached to the base of a common earthball, usually with several fruitbodies clustered around a single host.

Spore print · Olive-brown

Alder Bolete

Alder Bolete

Boletes

A soft, pale bolete restricted to damp alder carr, with shallow decurrent yellow pores that instantly bruise blue-black. Fruitbodies are often lopsided and clustered.

Spore print · Olive to yellowish-brown

Common Ink Cap

Common Ink Cap

Gilled

A clustered grey inkcap with an egg- to bell-shaped, faintly scaly cap that splits at the grooved margin and dissolves upward into black liquid, growing in tufts from buried wood.

Spore print · Black

Spindleshank

Gilled

Tough, clustered mushrooms at the foot of oaks, with rust-spotted gills and a distinctive grooved, spindle-shaped stem that tapers into a twisted root.

Spore print · White

Western Jack-O'-Lantern

Gilled

A clustered orange mushroom flushed with distinctive olive-green tones, with long-decurrent orange gills that glow faintly green in darkness, fruiting from oak stumps and roots on the Pacific coast.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellow

Beech Mushroom

Gilled

A tightly clustered wood mushroom with small tan caps marked by pale mottled spots and firm white stipes fused at a common base, fruiting on beech and other hardwood trunks in autumn.

Spore print · White

Golden Oyster

Golden Oyster

Gilled

A clustered oyster mushroom with bright lemon to golden-yellow caps that flatten into shallow funnels, with white decurrent gills on fused off-centre stalks.

Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey

Porcelain Fungus

Gilled

Glistening white, almost translucent caps coated in thick slime, clustered high on dead and dying beech, with a distinct ring on the slender white stem.

Spore print · White

Conifer Tuft

Gilled

A tightly clustered woodland fungus of conifer stumps, recognised by its tan-ochre cap and gills that shift from whitish to a distinctive smoky grey.

Spore print · Purple-brown

Black Poplar Mushroom

Gilled

A clustered brown-spored wood mushroom with a smooth two-toned cap that cracks in dry weather, a pale fibrous stipe and a persistent membranous ring.

Spore print · Tobacco brown

Honey Fungus

Honey Fungus

Gilled

A clustered, honey-coloured woodland mushroom with a shaggy ring, white spore print and black bootlace-like rhizomorphs running under bark. It is one of the most significant tree-root parasites in temperate forests.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Black-staining Polypore

Black-staining Polypore

Polypores

A large clustered rosette of grey-brown fans at the foot of hardwood trees whose white pore surface and pale flesh blacken within minutes of being touched.

Spore print · White

Ringless Honey Mushroom

Ringless Honey Mushroom

Gilled

A honey-brown clustered wood fungus that matches the true Honey Mushroom in colour and habit but has no ring at all on its long tapering stem. It swarms in huge tufts around the bases of oaks and other hardwoods.

Spore print · White

Spring King Bolete

Spring King Bolete

Boletes

A western North American porcini relative that fruits in clustered groups near melting snow in mountain conifer forest, often half-buried with a soil-crusted reddish-brown cap.

Spore print · Olive-brown

Funeral Bell

Gilled

A small, strongly hygrophanous honey-brown mushroom of rotting wood, identified by rusty brown spores, a thin membranous ring dusted rust by falling spores, and clustered growth on logs.

Spore print · Rusty brown