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 “Oak Bracket / Maze Polypore”
Blue Cheese Polypore
Polypores
A small, soft, hairy white bracket that develops distinct blue-grey tints, especially on the pore surface and where bruised, growing in tiers on dead conifer wood.
Spore print · Pale bluish white
Gilled Polypore
Polypores
A tough, zoned, hairy bracket whose underside is made of thick radiating gill-like plates rather than round pores, growing on dead birch and other hardwoods throughout the year.
Spore print · White
Hexagonal-pored Polypore
Polypores
A thin, orange-tinted polypore of fallen hardwood twigs whose underside is a striking honeycomb of very large, radially stretched hexagonal pores.
Spore print · White
Berkeley's Polypore
Polypores
One of the largest fungi of eastern North American forests, forming a massive rosette of thick cream to tan fans with coarse angular pores at the base of oaks.
Spore print · White
Cracked Cap Polypore
Polypores
A hard perennial conk almost restricted to black locust, its blackened upper crust splitting into deep blocky cracks above a rich rusty brown pore surface.
Spore print · Pale yellowish to whitish
Ochre Bracket
Polypores
A close relative of Turkey Tail that is thicker and stiffer, banded in warm ochre, tan and rust tones with a cushion-like swelling at the attachment.
Spore print · White
Oak Curtain Crust
Crusts
Thin, dark rust-brown tiers with wavy edges draped along oak stumps, with a velvety, smooth fertile surface and no 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
Black-staining Polypore
Polypores
A large clustered rosette of grey-brown fans at the foot of hardwood trees whose white pore surface and pale flesh blacken within minutes of being touched.
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
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
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
Bleeding Oak Crust
Crusts
An oak-loving crust that spreads over dead wood and turns out small hairy tan brackets along its edge, releasing red droplets from a scratch on fresh tissue. It is thinner and more clearly reflexed than its broadleaf relatives.
Spore print · White
Oak Leaf Blister
Other Fungi
A Taphrina sac fungus that raises pale, circular, dome-shaped blisters across oak leaves. The bulges are convex above and correspondingly hollowed on the underside.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
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
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
Artist's Conk
Polypores
A large perennial shelf fungus with a hard, lumpy grey-brown crust and a chalk-white pore surface that instantly bruises dark brown where scratched, the feature behind its name.
Spore print · Brown
Shaggy Mane
Gilled
A tall white cylindrical mushroom covered in shaggy upturned scales, whose gills blacken and dissolve into an inky liquid from the cap margin upward as it matures.
Spore print · Black
Lion's Mane
Toothed
An unmistakable white cushion of long, downward-hanging spines that grows from wounds on standing hardwoods, looking like a frozen waterfall or a shaggy mane.
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
Oakmoss
Other Fungi
A soft, antler-branched lichen with flattened straps that are greenish above and chalky white beneath, forming tufts on oak and other deciduous bark.
Spore print · Not applicable
Beefsteak Fungus
Polypores
A soft, moist, blood-red tongue-shaped bracket on oak, unique among polypores in having individually separate tubes rather than a fused pore layer.
Spore print · Pale pinkish-brown