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 “Porcelain Fungus”
Domicile Cup Fungus
Cups & Discs
A pale whitish to buff cup fungus famous for fruiting indoors on damp plaster, concrete, sand and even carpet, often growing in irregular, contorted shapes.
Spore print · White
False Coral Fungus
Corals & Clubs
A tough, leathery, whitish fungus whose flattened branches fuse sideways into fans and mats, looking like a coral but built like a jelly fungus.
Spore print · White
Orange Peel Fungus
Cups & Discs
Brilliant orange, thin and brittle cups that flatten, split and contort until they look exactly like scattered pieces of orange peel. It fruits in troops on bare compacted soil, track sides and gravelly ground.
Spore print · White
Wet Rot Fungus
Crusts
A thin, closely attached crust that starts creamy white and matures to olive- or umber-brown, its surface roughened with small warts and lumps. It grows on persistently wet dead wood outdoors and on damp timber indoors.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Dry Rot Fungus
Crusts
A flat, spreading wood-decay fungus forming rusty-brown wrinkled sheets edged with a thick white cottony margin, best known from structural conifer timber in damp buildings. Its pale, cord-like strands can travel long distances across masonry.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Zombie-Ant Fungus
Other Fungi
A parasitic fungus of carpenter ants that manipulates its host into clamping onto vegetation before killing it, then sends a wiry stalk out of the ant's head to release spores over the trail below.
Spore print · Not applicable
Anemone Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A scarlet stinkhorn that hatches from a white egg into a starfish-like ring of forked arms surrounding a disc of dark, fly-attracting slime.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
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
Tinder Conk
Polypores
An unmistakable hoof-shaped perennial bracket with a hard grey banded crust and a soft brown fibrous interior. It is one of the classic decay fungi of birch and beech across the northern hemisphere.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
Glue Crust
Crusts
A thin grey-brown crust on hazel, famous for cementing a dead branch to a living one so that it stays suspended in the canopy.
Spore print · White
Aleurodiscus oakesii
Crusts
A corticioid fungus that colonises the outer bark of living oaks, producing sunken, smooth grey patches studded with tiny cup- or disc-shaped fruiting bodies. The smooth, slightly depressed patches on an otherwise rough trunk are the easiest field character.
Spore print · White
Lobster Mushroom
Other Fungi
Not a mushroom in its own right but a parasitic ascomycete that encases Russula and Lactarius fruitbodies in a pimpled, brilliant orange-red crust, twisting them into dense, contorted shapes.
Spore print · Not applicable
White-egg Bird's Nest
Other Fungi
A squat, crucible-shaped little cup, tawny-ochre and felty outside with a smooth pale interior, holding neat white disc-shaped 'eggs'. The white peridioles set it apart from the grey and black ones of Cyathus.
Spore print · Not applicable (spores held in peridioles)
Golden Cup
Cups & Discs
A vivid orange spring cup fungus of conifer duff whose margins and bruised areas stain a distinctive blue-green. It is one of the earliest fungi to appear at the edge of retreating snow.
Spore print · White
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
White Brain
Jellies
A translucent white to greyish jelly that spreads along dead hardwood branches as glistening cushions which merge into folded, brain-like ridges.
Spore print · White
Stalked Lattice Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A tall stinkhorn with a slender whitish stalk carrying a globose, orange-red latticed head whose mesh spaces are filled with dark olive spore slime.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Toothed Cup
Cups & Discs
A small greyish-buff cup whose margin is cut into neat little teeth, growing on damp bare soil and mossy woodland paths. The toothed rim and pale, dull colouring set it apart from other soil cups.
Spore print · White
Crimped Gill
Gilled
A tiny, tough bracket that forms tiered rows of tawny-zoned fans on fallen hardwood branches, its underside covered in crimped, forking white folds rather than true gills.
Spore print · White
Crowded Parchment
Crusts
Dense masses of small, thin, orange-tan fans that fuse along their edges to sheathe fallen hardwood twigs and branches. The underside is smooth and unbroken, with no pores or wrinkles.
Spore print · White
Columned Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A warm-climate stinkhorn built from two to five thick orange columns that are free at the base and joined in an arch at the top, with dark spore slime on the inner faces of the arch.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Red Coral
Corals & Clubs
A brilliantly red to scarlet branched coral of Pacific conifer forests, growing from deep needle duff. Some forms carry contrasting yellow branch tips.
Spore print · Pale yellow
Golden Coral
Corals & Clubs
A large, richly golden branched coral rising from a short whitish trunk, fruiting from soil in broadleaf woodland. Branch and tip colour is nearly uniform, without pink or salmon tones.
Spore print · Pale ochre-yellow
Horsehair Parachute
Gilled
A pinhead-sized brown parachute perched on a stiff black hair, often accompanied by tangles of black horsehair-like cords running through the needle litter.
Spore print · White