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 “Tinder Fungus, Hoof Fungus, or False Tinder Conk”
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)
Cloud Ear
Jellies
A rubbery, ear- or cup-shaped bracket on dead hardwood, greyish and finely hairy on the upper surface and smooth purplish-brown beneath, shrinking to a hard flake when dry.
Spore print · White
Black Tooth
Toothed
A tough, dark, ground-dwelling toothed fungus with a velvety blue-black cap, a pale rim and grey spines. Unusually for a dark hydnoid, it drops a white spore print.
Spore print · White
Wrinkled Club
Corals & Clubs
A white club fungus with thick, irregularly wrinkled and grooved stems that are unbranched or only sparsely forked. It grows from soil in woodland, often along shaded path edges.
Spore print · White
Crown-tipped Coral
Corals & Clubs
A wood-inhabiting coral whose every branch ends in a small crown or cup ringed with tiny points, growing in rows along rotting hardwood logs.
Spore print · White
Scarlet Caterpillarclub
Other Fungi
A small bright orange club fungus that grows out of the buried pupa or larva of a moth. Digging carefully beneath the club reveals the orange-stained insect from which it arises.
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)
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
Moose Antlers
Cups & Discs
Clusters of tall, ear- or antler-shaped rubbery blades rising from a hard underground mass in rich eastern North American hardwood forest.
Spore print · Brownish
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
Cauliflower Mushroom
Corals & Clubs
A large cream-coloured rosette of flattened, crimped, ribbon-like lobes that grows at the base of conifers, resembling a cauliflower head or a bath sponge.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Hedgehog Mushroom
Toothed
A cream to pale apricot mushroom whose underside is covered in crowded, brittle, easily detached spines instead of gills or pores. It grows in troops and arcs on mossy woodland floors and often has an off-centre stipe.
Spore print · White to cream
White Coral Jelly
Jellies
A cluster of thin, translucent white gelatinous lobes that fan out from dead branches like a frozen flower or a piece of crumpled tissue. Its near-colourless, seaweed-like fronds set it apart from every other jelly fungus.
Spore print · White
Dead Man's Foot
Puffballs
A large, club- or foot-shaped fungus whose interior is packed with pea-sized chambers set in dark jelly, ripening from the top down into rusty brown dust. It grows on the poorest, most compacted ground.
Spore print · Cinnamon to rusty brown (spore mass)
Jelly Rot
Crusts
A soft, gelatinous crust that turns its upper edge outward into small white hairy shelves, with a shocking orange-pink wrinkled and ridged spore surface beneath. It sprawls in overlapping sheets across fallen logs in late autumn.
Spore print · White
Yellow Stagshorn
Jellies
Bright orange-yellow antler-shaped branches with a tough, gelatinous, rubbery texture, rooting into buried conifer wood by a deep tapering base.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
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
Craterellus lutescens
Gilled
A slender funnel-shaped fungus with a scurfy brown cap, a bright orange-yellow hollow stalk and an almost smooth orange underside rather than distinct ridges.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Smooth Chanterelle
Gilled
A bright orange-yellow chanterelle whose underside is almost completely smooth, with only faint wrinkles instead of the usual forking ridges. It is a common summer fungus of eastern oak woodlands.
Spore print · Pale yellow to yellowish-cream
Fragrant Chanterelle
Gilled
A vivid orange trumpet-shaped fungus that grows in dense fused clusters from a common base, with a nearly smooth underside and a powerful sweet aroma.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Saffron Milkcap
Gilled
A pine-associated milkcap with a concentrically zoned carrot-orange funnel cap, decurrent orange gills, carrot-coloured latex and a pitted stem, the whole fungus staining dull green where damaged.
Spore print · Pale ochre to buff
Crepidotus crocophyllus
Gilled
A stalkless fan-shaped wood fungus with a whitish cap flecked with tawny-brown scales and distinctive saffron to orange-yellow gills that age brown. It fruits on decaying hardwood.
Spore print · Brown to cinnamon-brown
Northern Tooth
Toothed
A massive tiered fungus that forms overlapping cream-coloured shelves high on living maple trunks, recognised by the crowded pendant spines that hang beneath each bracket instead of pores.
Spore print · White
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