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 “Common Puffball”
Common Bunt
Other Fungi
A smut fungus that hollows out wheat kernels and refills them with a mass of dark brown spores, producing fragile grey bunt balls with a distinctive fishy odour.
Spore print · Not applicable (dark brown spore mass)
Common Funnel
Gilled
A slender, pinkish-buff woodland mushroom whose thin cap develops a deep central funnel above crowded white decurrent gills.
Spore print · White
Common Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a pitted, honeycomb-like ovoid head fused to a hollow pale stalk, forming one continuous cavity from tip to base.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Common Inkcap
Gilled
A clustered grey-brown inkcap whose egg-shaped cap opens into a ribbed bell and then digests itself from the rim inward, dripping away as black ink. It rises in dense tufts from buried wood in gardens, verges and woodland edges.
Spore print · Black
Common Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A white hollow spongy stalk topped by a thimble-shaped, deeply pitted head coated in olive-green spore slime, emerging from a partly buried white egg. Its powerful odour attracts flies long before it is seen.
Spore print · Olive-brown (in gleba slime)
Common Stump Brittlestem
Gilled
A densely tufted stump mushroom with a date-brown cap that dries pale from the centre outward, brittle hollow white stems, and dark purple-brown spores.
Spore print · Dark purple-brown
Common Toadskin Lichen
Other Fungi
A small umbilicate rock lichen whose surface is raised into rounded blisters, giving it the warty look of toad skin, with matching pits on the underside.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Powderhorn Lichen
Other Fungi
A Cladonia of tree bases and rotting stumps whose slender grey-green podetia taper to blunt points and are coated in fine flour-like soredia, rarely forming cups.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Orange Lichen
Other Fungi
A flat, leafy orange to yellow lichen forming rosettes on twigs, walls and coastal rock, with rounded lobes and crowded orange disc-shaped fruiting cups.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Script Lichen
Crusts
A pale grey bark crust inscribed with fine black branching slits that look like handwriting or hieroglyphs across the trunk.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
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
Common Brown Cup
Cups & Discs
A dark olive- to chocolate-brown cup fungus of woodland soil and leaf litter, appearing in spring with a paler, finely scurfy outer surface.
Spore print · White
Winter Stalkball
Puffballs
A miniature stalked puffball with a pea-sized spore sac raised on a slender woody stalk, opening by a small tubular mouth ringed with darker colour. It grows in mossy sand and old mortared walls, mainly in winter.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Potato Earthball
Puffballs
A pale, almost smooth earthball that looks like a small buried potato, with a thin rind that cracks into fine scurfy patches. The interior ripens from white to a purple-brown dust.
Spore print · Purple-brown to blackish (spore mass)
Earthfan
Other Fungi
A tough, fibrous fungus forming overlapping rust- to chocolate-brown fans and rosettes on sandy ground, with a pale fringed edge and a warty, purplish-brown underside. It is a familiar sight around young pines on heathland and in nurseries.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Dead Man's Foot
Puffballs
A large, club- or foot-shaped fungus whose interior is packed with pea-sized chambers set in dark jelly, ripening from the top down into rusty brown dust. It grows on the poorest, most compacted ground.
Spore print · Cinnamon to rusty brown (spore mass)
Hebeloma crustuliniforme
Gilled
A pale clay-coloured woodland mushroom with crowded brown-maturing gills whose edges bead with droplets in humid weather, and a strong radish-like odour.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Ochre Brittlegill
Gilled
One of the most abundant woodland brittlegills, with a plain dull ochre-yellow cap, pale cream gills and a white stipe that greys distinctly with age and wet weather.
Spore print · Pale cream
Dog Lichen
Other Fungi
A large foliose lichen with broad grey-brown lobes, a downy upper surface, and a white veined underside bearing long shaggy rhizines.
Spore print · Not applicable
Northern Milkcap
Gilled
A large, greasy grey-violet milkcap of northern birch and spruce forests, with white latex that dries greyish or greenish on the pale gills. It is one of the most abundant Lactarius species in Fennoscandia and the boreal belt.
Spore print · Pale cream to pale yellow
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
Parasol Mushroom
Gilled
One of the largest European grassland agarics, recognised by its drumstick-shaped young form, shaggy brown cap scales and a snakeskin-patterned stem carrying a thick, movable double ring.
Spore print · White
Dingy Twiglet
Gilled
A small, sombre olive-brown woodland mushroom with a finely velvety cap and a pale frosted gill edge, fruiting on fallen deciduous branches.
Spore print · Olive-brown to snuff brown