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 “Honey Fungus / Honey Mushroom”
Milky Mushroom
Gilled
A stout, entirely milk-white tropical mushroom with a thick fleshy cap, crowded white gills and a solid club-shaped stipe. It fruits from casing soil over composting straw in hot, humid conditions.
Spore print · White
Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A shelving, shell-shaped mushroom with white decurrent gills running down a short off-centre stem, growing in overlapping tiers on hardwood trunks. Colour varies from slate-grey and brown to almost white.
Spore print · White to lilac-grey
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
Deer Mushroom
Gilled
A soft grey-brown wood-dwelling mushroom with free gills that turn pink as they mature, no ring and no volva, and a pink spore print.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Caesar's Mushroom
Gilled
A striking Mediterranean Amanita with a smooth orange cap, a strongly grooved margin, deep golden-yellow free gills and stem, and a thick white membranous sac at the base.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Haymaker's Mushroom
Gilled
A tiny, extremely common lawn fungus with a hygrophanous date-brown cap that dries pale from the centre, and mottled dark brown gills with pale edges. Its dark brown rather than black spore print separates it from true Panaeolus.
Spore print · Dark brown
Almond Mushroom
Gilled
A warm-climate Agaricus of compost and enriched garden soil, recognised by its brown-fibrillose cap, large pendulous ring and strong almond-like aroma.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Inky Mushroom
Gilled
A grey-scaled woodland Agaricus with a dark-centred cap, a chrome-yellow staining stipe base and a distinctly inky odour.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Field Mushroom
Gilled
The classic white mushroom of old pasture, with a dry silky cap, a thin fragile ring and gills that are a vivid bright pink when young before turning chocolate-brown. It fruits in troops and rings after rain.
Spore print · Dark brown
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
Meadow Mushroom
Gilled
The classic white grassland Agaricus, with free gills that shift from bright pink to chocolate-brown, a simple fragile ring and a dark brown spore print. It appears in troops and rings on old pasture after rain.
Spore print · Dark chocolate-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
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
Toothed Jelly Fungus
Jellies
A translucent, rubbery, tongue-shaped fungus on rotting conifer wood whose underside is covered in soft gelatinous spines. It is the only jelly fungus with a genuinely toothed fertile surface.
Spore print · White
Lemon Peel Fungus
Cups & Discs
An ear-shaped yellow cup split down one side, with an apricot-pink flush on the inner surface, growing in leaf litter under broadleaved trees.
Spore print · White
Ear-pick Fungus
Toothed
A miniature dark brown toothed fungus with a kidney-shaped hairy cap on a slender side-attached stalk, growing directly from decaying pine cones. Its shape recalls an old-fashioned ear-pick.
Spore print · White
Red Cage Fungus
Stinkhorns
A stinkhorn that emerges from a white egg as a hollow, red, net-like sphere, its inner arms smeared with olive-brown spore slime. It is common in mulched garden beds and disturbed ground in warm-temperate regions.
Spore print · Not applicable
Bleeding Tooth Fungus
Toothed
A knobbly, cream-white tooth fungus whose growing surface exudes vivid blood-red droplets, fruiting in conifer duff and often fusing with its neighbours into irregular crusted masses.
Spore print · Brown
Caterpillar Fungus
Other Fungi
A parasitic fungus of ghost moth larvae that fills the caterpillar's body and pushes a single narrow dark brown club above the turf. The rigid larva remains attached below ground like a root.
Spore print · Not applicable — spores shed from perithecia
Darwin's Fungus
Cups & Discs
A globe-shaped orange ascomycete that erupts in clusters from woody galls on southern beech trees in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, its surface dimpled with honeycomb-like cups.
Spore print · White
Bamboo Fungus
Stinkhorns
A tropical stinkhorn whose white spongy stalk carries a pitted, slime-covered conical head and, beneath it, a spectacular lacy net that hangs down like a skirt. It erupts from a soft white egg in bamboo litter.
Spore print · Not applicable — olive-brown spore slime
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