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-Capped Butter Bolete”
Shaggy Parasol
Gilled
A stout, heavily shaggy relative of the Parasol Mushroom with a smooth unbanded stem, a bulbous base and pale flesh that stains saffron then dull reddish brown where it is cut.
Spore print · White
Reishi
Polypores
A hard, kidney-shaped bracket with a strikingly glossy, varnished-looking reddish-mahogany surface, a pale cream pore underside and often a lateral or eccentric stalk.
Spore print · Brown
Blackening Brittlegill
Gilled
A heavy, thick-fleshed brittlegill with unusually distant, fat gills whose white flesh reddens then slowly turns grey and finally coal-black, leaving charred-looking husks that persist for months.
Spore print · White
Wood Ear
Jellies
A gelatinous, tan to reddish-brown bracket shaped remarkably like a human ear, with a veined and folded inner surface and a minutely velvety outer face. It is strongly associated with elder and fruits through the coldest months.
Spore print · White
False Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a reddish to dark brown head thrown into irregular convoluted lobes like a brain or a crumpled turban, with no ridge-and-pit honeycomb. Cut vertically it is irregularly chambered rather than one clean hollow.
Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish
Basket Fungus
Stinkhorns
A white latticed sphere of spongy arms that hatches from a gelatinous egg and, uniquely, detaches at maturity so the whole basket can be rolled about by wind.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Jack-o'-Lantern
Gilled
A vivid orange clustering mushroom of hardwood stumps with true, sharp-edged, deeply decurrent gills that can glow faintly green in darkness, and a pale spore print.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellowish white
Jack O'Lantern Mushroom
Gilled
A vivid orange gilled mushroom that grows in dense clumps on hardwood stumps and roots, with sharp, deep, decurrent true gills whose edges can glow faintly in darkness.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Amethyst Deceiver
Gilled
A small woodland mushroom that is intensely violet when fresh and moist, with thick, widely spaced gills of the same colour and a fibrous, twisted stem. It fades so dramatically as it dries that it can look like a completely different species.
Spore print · White
Hericium abietis
Toothed
The largest of the western toothed corals, forming cream-white branched masses on dead conifer wood. It is the conifer counterpart of the hardwood-loving Hericium species and can reach the size of a football or larger.
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