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”
Cortinarius rubellus
Gilled
A slender foxy-orange webcap of mossy conifer forest, recognised by its sharply umbonate fibrillose cap, thick widely spaced rusty gills and pale yellow bands on the stipe.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Helvella leucomelaena
Cups & Discs
A deep, thick-walled cup with a near-black interior and a pale exterior, sitting on a short white ribbed base that is often half-buried in sandy soil. It is a spring associate of pines.
Spore print · White
Gabled False Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring false morel of eastern hardwood forest whose chestnut-brown cap is folded into two to four broad, flaring lobes with pale wavy margins, sitting on a stout white ribbed stalk.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Hebeloma sacchariolens
Gilled
A pale, unassuming woodland Hebeloma recognised chiefly by its extremely strong sweet, scorched-sugar scent, clay-brown spore deposit and finely fringed gill edges.
Spore print · Clay-brown
Girdled Webcap
Gilled
A slimy webcap named for the striking series of whitish glutinous girdles that band its stem like snakeskin. It grows with willow, poplar and birch on damp, often calcareous ground.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Cortinarius gentilis
Gilled
A small, slender, tawny-orange webcap of mossy conifer forest, with thick widely spaced ochre gills and yellowish veil bands on a slim stem. Its dry silky cap carries a sharp umbo.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Contrary Webcap
Gilled
A stout conifer webcap whose warm orange-tawny cap contrasts sharply with brilliant violet-blue young gills and a thick white club-shaped stem. Rusty brown spores overtake the blue with age.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Fringed Earthstar
Puffballs
A small, pale, stalkless earthstar whose fibrous mouth is ragged and fringed but never enclosed in a sharply outlined court. One of the commonest earthstars of woodland litter.
Spore print · Brown (spore mass)
Gilled Polypore
Polypores
A tough, zoned, hairy bracket whose underside is made of thick radiating gill-like plates rather than round pores, growing on dead birch and other hardwoods throughout the year.
Spore print · White
Geranium Brittlegill
Gilled
A beech-wood brittlegill in which cap, gills and stipe are all the same pale straw-honey colour, identified by that uniformity together with a strong smell of geranium leaves.
Spore print · Pale cream
Corrugated-cap Milkcap
Gilled
A large, dark reddish-brown milkcap with a velvety, deeply corrugated cap surface and cinnamon-tinted gills that stain brown. It bleeds abundant white latex from any damaged tissue.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Fool's Webcap
Gilled
A warm foxy-brown webcap of southern broadleaf woodland with thick, widely spaced saffron-rust gills and a plain yellowish stem carrying only faint cobwebby veil fibres.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Old Man of the Woods
Boletes
An unmistakable bolete covered in coarse, shaggy, blackish-grey pyramidal scales, with a woolly stipe and white flesh that turns red and then black when cut. Its spore print is nearly black.
Spore print · Blackish-brown to black
King Bolete
Boletes
A heavy, bun-shaped brown bolete with a stout swollen white stipe carrying fine pale netting, and a sponge layer that ages from white through cream to olive-yellow without bruising blue.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Peppery Bolete
Boletes
A small, slender bolete with wide coppery-rust pores running slightly down the stipe and a vivid chrome-yellow base, often found close to Fly Agarics on acid heathy ground.
Spore print · Cinnamon to rusty brown
Common Ink Cap
Gilled
A clustered grey inkcap with an egg- to bell-shaped, faintly scaly cap that splits at the grooved margin and dissolves upward into black liquid, growing in tufts from buried wood.
Spore print · Black
Snakeskin Grisette
Gilled
A large ringless Amanita whose bronze-brown cap carries ragged grey veil patches and whose stem is wrapped in snakeskin-like grey bands above a crumbling volva.
Spore print · White
Meadow Puffball
Puffballs
A small flat-topped white puffball of short turf, distinguished by a membranous internal diaphragm that separates the spore mass from the sterile base. Mature bodies open by a wide ragged mouth.
Spore print · Olive-brown spore mass
Sebacina incrustans
Crusts
A greyish-white waxy crust that creeps over soil and swallows grass stems, twigs and dead leaves in its path, coating them in a smooth continuous skin. Its upward-turned free edge is often shallowly lobed.
Spore print · White
Small Chanterelle
Gilled
A miniature orange-yellow chanterelle, often no wider than a fingernail, scattered in moss beneath oaks. Its thin flesh, widely spaced blunt ridges and slender stalk are diagnostic.
Spore print · Pale yellow to whitish
Star Earthball
Puffballs
A large, hard earthball that develops underground and then bursts upward, tearing its thick rind into stiff pale rays like a clenched hand opening. The exposed spore mass inside is dark brown.
Spore print · Dark brown to blackish (spore mass)
Mountain Blond Morel
Morels & Allies
A western mountain morel shaped like a black morel but coloured like a blond one: its ridges stay pale cream and never blacken, contrasting with greyish to tan pits. It fruits in conifer forest as the snow retreats.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
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
Mild Milkcap
Gilled
A small, abundant reddish-brown milkcap of beech litter with a dry unzoned cap, crowded pale gills and copious white latex that dries whey-like on the gills. It often fruits in large troops beneath mature beech.
Spore print · Cream to pale buff