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 “Not a mushroom/fungus”
Scaly Inkcap
Gilled
A clustered inkcap whose buff-brown bell-shaped cap is decorated with felty whitish veil patches. It fruits in tufts on hardwood stumps and buried wood.
Spore print · Black
Yellow-gilled Gymnopilus
Gilled
A colourful rustgill with a purplish-red, fibrillose-scaly cap and brilliant yellow gills that mature to rust, commonly clustered on wood chip beds.
Spore print · Rusty orange-brown
Ochre Brittlegill
Gilled
One of the most abundant woodland brittlegills, with a plain dull ochre-yellow cap, pale cream gills and a white stipe that greys distinctly with age and wet weather.
Spore print · Pale cream
Netted Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A stout North American stinkhorn that hangs a short, coarse white net from beneath its pitted head. The veil reaches only partway down the thick spongy stalk.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spores in the slimy gleba)
Snowy Inkcap
Gilled
A small, brilliantly white inkcap coated in a floury veil, growing on cow and horse dung in pasture. Its pure white cap darkens and dissolves to black within a day.
Spore print · Black
Map Lichen
Crusts
A vivid yellow-green crustose lichen whose black-rimmed patches meet like countries on a map, painting granite and slate in exposed mountain country.
Spore print · Not applicable
Summer Truffle
Other Fungi
A widespread hypogeous ascomycete with a black exterior of large, coarse pyramidal warts and a pale hazel-brown interior broadly marbled with white veins.
Spore print · Not applicable (hypogeous)
Wolf Lichen
Other Fungi
An unmistakable neon yellow-green shrubby lichen that forms bristly tufts on conifer bark and bare weathered wood in dry mountain forests.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
Ebony Cup
Cups & Discs
Small jet-black rubbery cups that appear in spring among moss and conifer needle litter, their outer surface felted with fine dark hairs.
Spore print · White
Crowned Earthstar
Puffballs
A medium-large earthstar with a dark grey, often bloomed spore sac raised on a short stalk above strongly recurved rays, and a silky fibrous mouth with no grooves.
Spore print · Dark brown (spore mass)
Common Toadskin Lichen
Other Fungi
A small umbilicate rock lichen whose surface is raised into rounded blisters, giving it the warty look of toad skin, with matching pits on the underside.
Spore print · Not applicable
Coffee Leaf Rust
Other Fungi
A tropical rust that dusts the undersides of coffee leaves with vivid orange-yellow powder beneath pale translucent spots on the upper surface.
Spore print · Not applicable (bright orange spore masses)
Grey Milkcap
Gilled
A thin-fleshed lilac-grey milkcap of damp birch woods whose white latex dries grey-green on the gills. The greasy, smooth cap and grey-staining pale gills are its key marks.
Spore print · Pale cream
Charcoal Scalycap
Gilled
A small sticky-capped Pholiota restricted to burnt ground, appearing on old bonfire and campfire sites with a tawny cap, scaly stipe and clay-brown spore print.
Spore print · Clay-brown
Cinnamon Webcap
Gilled
A small slender webcap with a silky cinnamon-brown cap, crowded saffron to golden-yellow gills and a yellow-olive stipe, fruiting in mossy conifer woodland.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Bear Lentinus
Gilled
A stalkless, fan-shaped bracket with a dark velvety-hairy base and pale, sharply saw-toothed gills radiating from the point of attachment to dead hardwood.
Spore print · White
Golden Waxcap
Gilled
A clean lemon to golden-yellow waxcap with a viscid smooth cap and a slightly greasy yellow stem, one of the commonest and brightest species in autumn turf.
Spore print · White
Gray Bolete
Boletes
A grey-capped hardwood bolete with a whitish stipe wrapped in a bold dark net and a yellow patch at the very base. Pale pores stain brownish where handled.
Spore print · Olive-brown to brown
Hammered Shield Lichen
Other Fungi
A grey foliose lichen whose lobes are embossed with a network of white ridges and shallow pits, looking like hammered metal, with soredia along the ridge lines.
Spore print · Not applicable
False Turkey Tail
Crusts
A thin, fan-shaped bracket banded in tan, orange and brown that mimics the true Turkey Tail from above but has a completely smooth, poreless underside.
Spore print · White
British Soldiers Lichen
Other Fungi
A small Cladonia whose grey-green stalks are capped with vivid scarlet fruiting knobs, growing in colonies on rotting stumps, fence rails and acid soil.
Spore print · Not applicable
Bloody Milkcap
Gilled
A pine-associated milkcap of southern limestone woodland whose flesh releases dark blood-red latex the instant it is cut, with no orange phase at all.
Spore print · Pale cream to buff
Bitter Bolete
Boletes
A robust brown-capped bolete with white pores that flush pink with age and a pale stipe carrying a bold dark brown network. Widespread in conifer and mixed woodland.
Spore print · Pinkish-brown