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 “Possibly a Marasmius or similar small gilled mushroom”
St. George's Mushroom
Gilled
A thick, cream-coloured spring grassland mushroom with crowded white gills, a stout ringless stipe and a strong mealy odour. It often grows in arcs and rings along hedge banks and downland turf.
Spore print · White
Elm Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A firm, pale, smooth-capped mushroom that grows from wounds on standing elms and maples, distinguished from true oysters by its stout central-to-eccentric stipe and gills that are notched rather than long-decurrent.
Spore print · White
American Caesar's Mushroom
Gilled
A brilliant red-to-orange Amanita of eastern North American oak and pine woods, with yellow gills, a yellow-orange skirt ring and a thick white sac at the base.
Spore print · White
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
White Button Mushroom
Gilled
The familiar rounded white Agaricus with free gills that shift from pale pink to dark brown and a soft ring on the stipe. Wild forms grow on rich, composted or manured ground rather than on wood.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Split Gill
Gilled
A small, tough, hairy white fan growing sideways from dead wood, with gill-like folds split lengthwise down the middle that curl open and shut with the weather.
Spore print · White
Garlic Parachute
Gilled
A slender beech-litter mushroom with a pale hygrophanous cap on a disproportionately long, velvety blackish rooting stem, and an unmistakable strong garlic smell.
Spore print · White
Psathyrella aquatica
Gilled
A small brown-capped brittlestem remarkable for producing its fruit bodies fully submerged in flowing cold water, first documented in a spring-fed river in Oregon.
Spore print · Dark brown to blackish brown
Orange Pinwheel
Gilled
A vivid rusty-orange miniature with a pleated, umbrella-like cap held on a wiry blackish thread of a stem, scattered through damp hardwood litter.
Spore print · White
Silky Rosegill
Gilled
A tall pale mushroom of compost and cultivated ground with a slightly greasy grey cap, free gills that turn salmon pink, no ring, and a large white sac at the stem base.
Spore print · Pink to salmon pink
Pearly Parachute
Gilled
A pale, silky-capped litter mushroom of beech woods, faintly washed with lilac-grey and growing in loose tufts from a white woolly base in the leaf mould.
Spore print · White
Stubble Rosegill
Gilled
A large greasy-capped mushroom of disturbed rich ground, with free gills that turn deep salmon pink and a stipe seated in a conspicuous white sac-like volva but with no ring at all.
Spore print · Salmon pink
Fairy Ring Champignon
Gilled
A tough little tan grassland mushroom with a broad central umbo, widely spaced pale gills and a wiry pliant stipe, famous for growing in expanding fairy rings. Dried fruitbodies revive and refresh after rain.
Spore print · White
Mauve Parachute
Gilled
A jewel-like tropical parachute with a deeply pleated purple-red cap, pale distant gills and a shining black hair of a stem, scattered on fallen twigs and leaves.
Spore print · White
Blue Edge Pinkgill
Gilled
A small dark blue-black grassland pinkgill whose pale gills carry a finely serrated blue-black edge visible with a hand lens.
Spore print · Pink
Fool's Funnel
Gilled
A small white to buff funnel of lawns and short turf, marked by concentric frost-like zones on the cap and crowded decurrent gills.
Spore print · White
Shiitake
Gilled
A tough-fleshed wood-rotting agaric with a dry brown cap that cracks into a pale crazed pattern, white notched gills and a fibrous, off-centre stem with a fleeting ring zone.
Spore print · White
Poplar Fieldcap
Gilled
A clustering trunk-dwelling mushroom with a tan cap that wrinkles and cracks with age, cinnamon-brown gills, and a tough pale stem carrying a persistent spore-stained ring.
Spore print · Dull tobacco brown
Brown Mottlegill
Gilled
One of the commonest small brown mushrooms of mown lawns, with a two-tone drying cap and mottled dark brown gills that give a dark brown rather than black spore print.
Spore print · Dark brown
Rooting Shank
Gilled
A tall, slender woodland mushroom with a wrinkled, greasy ochre cap, widely spaced white gills and a long tapering stem that continues underground as a deep root-like tail.
Spore print · White
Enoki
Gilled
A cold-weather wood-rotter forming dense tufts of small, glossy tawny caps above dark velvety stems. Cultivated strains grown in darkness look completely different: long, pale, thread-thin stems with tiny white caps.
Spore print · White
Pink Oyster
Gilled
A tropical oyster mushroom forming shelved rosettes of bright salmon-pink fan-shaped caps with deeply decurrent gills, fading to buff with age.
Spore print · White to pale pinkish lilac
Blue Pinkgill
Gilled
A small but unmistakable New Zealand mushroom with an intensely blue, conical, pointed cap and pinkish gills that yield a pink spore print. It grows singly or in small groups in wet native forest litter.
Spore print · Pink
Neonothopanus gardneri
Gilled
A large Brazilian bracket-like agaric that grows from the leaf bases of babassu palms and glows a vivid yellow-green after dark. Its off-centre stipe, funnel-shaped tan cap and strongly decurrent gills are diagnostic.
Spore print · White