Mushroom Identifier

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 Red-banded Polypore

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

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

Conifer Mazegill

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

Banded Mottlegill

Banded Mottlegill

Gilled

A widespread mottlegill of compost heaps and manured ground, recognised by a hygrophanous reddish-brown cap that dries with a darker band around the margin and a jet-black spore print.

Spore print · Black

Blushing Rosette

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

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

Turkey Tail

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

Blushing Bracket

Blushing Bracket

Polypores

A flat, radially wrinkled bracket in reddish and tan bands whose pale maze-like underside flushes distinctly pink-red wherever it is touched.

Spore print · White

Beefsteak Fungus

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

Saffron Milk Cap

Gilled

A stout orange milkcap with concentric bands on the cap, decurrent orange gills, and carrot-orange latex that slowly turns the flesh green. It grows only with pines.

Spore print · Pale cream to buff

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

Birch Mazegill

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

Chaga

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)

Heterobasidion annosum

Heterobasidion annosum

Polypores

A perennial, irregularly shelving polypore found at the root collar and stump surfaces of conifers, recognised by its rough red-brown to blackish upper crust, sharp white growing margin and cream pore surface.

Spore print · White

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

Dryad's Saddle

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

Cinnamon Bracket

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

Orange Mock Oyster

Orange Mock Oyster

Gilled

A stalkless bright orange bracket covered in dense woolly hair, with deep orange gills radiating beneath, fruiting in overlapping tiers on dead logs in late autumn.

Spore print · Pinkish buff

Shaggy Bracket

Polypores

A large, thick, coarsely shaggy bracket that starts bright rusty orange and ages through dark brown to black, growing high on the trunks of living broadleaved trees.

Spore print · Yellowish brown

Artist's Conk

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

Chicken of the Woods

Chicken of the Woods

Polypores

A vivid orange and sulphur-yellow bracket fungus forming large overlapping tiers on tree trunks, with a bright yellow pore surface and thick, soft flesh that fades to chalky white with age.

Spore print · White

Oak Mazegill

Polypores

A thick, corky, dull-coloured bracket on oak whose underside is carved into a deep labyrinth of thick-walled winding channels.

Spore print · White

Split Porecrust

Split Porecrust

Polypores

An extremely common white to cream resupinate polypore whose pores split and fray, becoming maze-like and finally tooth-like towards the centre.

Spore print · White