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 “Dryad's Saddle / Pheasant's Back”
Wolf Lichen
Other Fungi
An unmistakable neon yellow-green shrubby lichen that forms bristly tufts on conifer bark and bare weathered wood in dry mountain forests.
Spore print · Not applicable
White Pine Blister Rust
Other Fungi
A two-host rust that raises orange, blister-like sacs on the bark of five-needle pines and clothes currant leaf undersides with yellow pustules and hair-like brown columns.
Spore print · Not applicable (orange-yellow spore masses)
Black Bulgar
Cups & Discs
Rubbery black top-shaped buttons crowding the bark of freshly fallen oak, with a shiny black fertile disc that leaves dark spore smudges on the fingers.
Spore print · Blackish brown
Oak Crust
Crusts
A thin lilac-grey waxy crust on dead oak twigs that curls away from the bark as it dries, exposing a dark brown to black under-surface.
Spore print · White
St. George's Mushroom
Gilled
A thick, cream-coloured spring grassland mushroom with crowded white gills, a stout ringless stipe and a strong mealy odour. It often grows in arcs and rings along hedge banks and downland turf.
Spore print · White
Veiled Polypore
Polypores
A small, hard, pale globe or hoof attached to dead conifer bark, unique among polypores in having its pore surface sealed inside a membranous veil pierced by a single small opening.
Spore print · White
Frosty Fibrecap
Gilled
A rich chestnut-brown fibrecap whose umbo carries whitish felted veil remnants like a dusting of frost. Frequent on beech-wood paths and calcareous banks.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Ash Dieback
Cups & Discs
A minute white cup fungus that fruits in summer on the blackened leaf stalks of ash lying in the litter. Its asexual stage produces diamond-shaped bark lesions and crown dieback on living ash trees.
Spore print · White
Landscape Morel
Morels & Allies
A black-clade morel that fruits in bark mulch, flower beds and freshly landscaped ground rather than in forest. Its cap pits are arranged in unusually neat vertical rows, giving a ladder-like appearance.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Artillery Fungus
Other Fungi
A pinhead-sized fungus that splits into a tiny orange star and fires a single dark spore ball several metres into the air. It swarms over damp bark mulch and rotting wood.
Spore print · Not applicable (spores in one ejected ball)
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
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
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
Bay Cup
Cups & Discs
A dark bay-brown cup with an olive-flushed interior that grows on bare damp soil along woodland banks and path edges. Its scurfy paler exterior and irregular splitting margin are useful field characters.
Spore print · White