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 “Field Mushroom / Meadow Mushroom”
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
Gypsy Mushroom
Gilled
A sturdy ochre mushroom with a radially wrinkled cap dusted silvery-white over the centre, rusty-brown gills, and the unusual distinction of a true membranous ring on a webcap.
Spore print · Rusty ochre-brown
Straw Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical decomposer that emerges as a dark egg wrapped in a membrane, then expands to a grey-brown cap on a ringless stipe seated in a sac-like volva. Its gills turn pink and the spore print is salmon.
Spore print · Salmon pink
Hedgehog Mushroom
Toothed
A cream to pale apricot mushroom whose underside is covered in crowded, brittle, easily detached spines instead of gills or pores. It grows in troops and arcs on mossy woodland floors and often has an off-centre stipe.
Spore print · White to cream
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
Horse Mushroom
Gilled
A large, robust white grassland Agaricus with a distinctive double 'cogwheel' ring, greyish-white young gills that turn chocolate-brown, and a strong aniseed odour. It forms troops and rings in open pasture.
Spore print · Dark chocolate-brown
Button Mushroom
Gilled
A stocky white or tan Agaricus with free gills that run from pale pink through cocoa to blackish brown, a simple membranous ring, and no volva at the stem base.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Field Blewit
Gilled
A stout grassland mushroom with a plain buff cap set on a striking blue-violet streaked stipe, fruiting in rings in old pasture after the first frosts.
Spore print · Pale pink
Field Bird's Nest
Other Fungi
A small grey goblet with a widely flaring, often wavy mouth and a smooth inner wall, holding a few unusually large lead-grey discs. It favours open ground and plant litter rather than deep woodland.
Spore print · Not applicable (spores held in peridioles)
Scaly Wood Mushroom
Gilled
A tall woodland Agaricus clothed in dark reddish-brown fibrous scales, whose white flesh turns vivid blood-red within seconds of being cut. Fruits in conifer and mixed forest litter.
Spore print · Dark brown
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
Sky Blue Mushroom
Gilled
A small, intensely indigo-blue forest mushroom whose gills flush salmon-pink as its angular pink spores mature.
Spore print · Pink
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
Pink Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical and subtropical oyster mushroom forming rosettes of thin salmon-pink to rose fans on dead hardwood, the colour fading to buff as the fruit bodies mature.
Spore print · Pale pink to whitish
Aspen Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A North American oyster mushroom restricted to dead aspen and cottonwood, with pale fleshy caps in overlapping shelves and a buff-tinted rather than lilac spore print.
Spore print · White to pale buff
Golden Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A vivid golden-yellow oyster mushroom that grows in dense bouquets from dead hardwood, its thin funnel-shaped caps fading to pale ochre as they age.
Spore print · White to pale lilac
Fairy Ring Mushroom
Gilled
A small, tough-stemmed grassland mushroom with a tan, broadly umbonate cap and widely spaced pale gills, famous for growing in expanding rings and arcs on lawns and pasture.
Spore print · White
Chicken Fat Mushroom
Boletes
A slender bright yellow bolete with a slimy, red-streaked cap and cottony veil fragments on the margin. It grows only with eastern white pine, often in large troops.
Spore print · Cinnamon-brown
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
Blushing Wood Mushroom
Gilled
A brown-scaled woodland Agaricus of conifer litter whose white flesh blushes vivid red within moments of being cut.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Rosy Wood Mushroom
Gilled
A delicate, small-statured Agaricus with pinkish-lilac fibrils over a cream cap and a stipe base that flushes chrome yellow when handled. It fruits in woodland and park litter.
Spore print · Dark 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
Eastern Cauliflower Mushroom
Other Fungi
A large cream rosette built from broad, flat, concentrically zoned leaf-like lobes, growing at the base of oaks and other hardwoods in eastern North America.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Paddy Straw Mushroom
Gilled
A tropical Volvariella that emerges from a dark, egg-like universal veil, leaving a thick sac at the stem base beneath a silky grey-brown cap with free pink gills.
Spore print · Pink to salmon pink