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 “Giant Polypore”
White Cheese Polypore
Polypores
A soft, moist, pure white annual bracket with a finely downy cap and minute white pores, drying to a light chalky-white shelf on dead hardwood.
Spore print · White
Mossy Maple Polypore
Polypores
A small perennial bracket that grows in overlapping clusters from wounds on living maples, instantly recognised by the carpet of green moss and algae that covers its cap and its very fine white pores.
Spore print · White
Mustard Yellow Polypore
Polypores
A thin tiered bracket of dead hardwood whose bright mustard-yellow velvety top contrasts sharply with a dark purplish to grey-brown pore surface of very fine pores.
Spore print · White
Violet-toothed Polypore
Polypores
Thin, flexible brackets massed in rows along dead hardwood, recognised by an underside that is violet when fresh and breaks up into ragged teeth with age.
Spore print · White
Black-footed Polypore
Polypores
A stalked polypore with a polished chestnut-brown, funnel-shaped cap and minute white pores, recognised instantly by the inky black lower half of its stem.
Spore print · White
Milk-white Toothed Polypore
Toothed
A white resupinate fungus whose surface breaks from angular pores into flattened jagged teeth, usually with narrow hairy-topped caps along the margin.
Spore print · White
Spectacular Rustgill
Gilled
A big, showy orange-tawny agaric that fruits in massive clusters at the base of broadleaf stumps, with a fibrillose scaly cap, ringed stipe and rusty orange spore print.
Spore print · Rusty orange-brown
Smoky Bracket
Polypores
A thin, flexible shelf fungus recognised by the sharp contrast between its pale buff cap, white flesh and strikingly smoke-grey to blackish pore surface that darkens further where handled.
Spore print · White
Agaricus crocodilinus
Gilled
A very large white meadow Agaricus whose dry cap cracks into flat plates like crocodile skin. It fruits in coastal grassland and pasture, chiefly in western North America.
Spore print · Dark brown
The Prince
Gilled
One of the largest field mushrooms, with a squarish young cap patterned in fine golden-brown fibrous scales, a big pendulous ring and flesh that yellows slowly where handled. It smells strongly of almonds.
Spore print · Dark brown
Conifer Mazegill
Polypores
A tough rust-brown bracket with a bright orange growing margin and an underside of thick, radiating, ochre-brown gill-like plates.
Spore print · White
Blushing Rosette
Polypores
An oddly shaped cream to pinkish-buff polypore forming rosettes or lopsided funnels on the ground above buried roots, staining reddish brown where handled and often weeping red droplets.
Spore print · White
Birch Mazegill
Polypores
A tough zoned bracket that looks like a Trametes from above but carries genuine radiating gill plates on its underside instead of pores.
Spore print · White
Red-belted Conk
Polypores
A tough perennial bracket recognised by a shiny resinous crust banded in red-orange with a cream to white growing edge, and a hard white context. It is among the most abundant decay fungi of conifer logs in northern forests.
Spore print · White
Termite Mushroom
Gilled
A giant tropical agaric with a sharply umbonate pale cap and a long tapering root that runs down to the fungus comb of a termite colony.
Spore print · Pinkish cream
Chaga
Polypores
A black, deeply cracked sterile mass that erupts from living birch trunks like a lump of charcoal, revealing bright rusty-orange interior tissue when broken.
Spore print · Pale brown (from hidden fertile crust)
Tiger's Eye
Polypores
A small, thin, leathery funnel-shaped polypore on a slender central stalk, its cap silky and banded in concentric rings of rust, ochre and grey-brown with a brown pore surface underneath.
Spore print · Yellowish brown
Thick-footed Morel
Morels & Allies
The traditional name for the largest yellow morels, distinguished by a swollen, deeply furrowed and chambered stalk base beneath a broad ochre honeycomb cap. Specimens can exceed 25 cm in height.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Rosy Conk
Polypores
A small, tough perennial bracket whose dull grey-brown top gives no hint of the striking rose-pink pore surface beneath. Pink flesh running right through the context confirms it.
Spore print · White
Turkey Tail
Polypores
A thin, tough, fan-shaped bracket banded in concentric zones of contrasting colour and texture, growing in overlapping tiers and rosettes on dead hardwood. The underside is a fine white pore surface.
Spore print · White
Macro Mushroom
Gilled
One of the largest white meadow Agaricus species, with a thick cracking cap that can exceed 25 cm and an unusually massive, felty ring. A grassland decomposer of long-established, lightly managed pasture.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Wine Cap
Gilled
A large mulch-bed mushroom with a wine-red cap fading to tan, purple-grey gills, and an unmistakable thick white ring whose upper surface splits into radiating cogwheel spokes.
Spore print · Dark purple-brown to purple-black
Cinnamon Bracket
Polypores
A soft, evenly cinnamon-coloured bracket whose cap, flesh and pores are all the same warm ochre-brown, and which turns brilliant violet where a drop of alkali touches it.
Spore print · White
Dryad's Saddle
Polypores
A large fan-shaped bracket patterned with concentric brown scales like a pheasant's plumage, set on a short off-centre stem with a black base.
Spore print · White