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”
Yellowfoot Dapperling
Gilled
A slim woodland dapperling with a shaggy ochre-brown scaly cap and a stem sheathed below the ring in loose yellow woolly veil, brightest toward the base. Its large spindle-shaped spores give the species its name.
Spore print · White
Snow False Morel
Morels & Allies
A squat, heavy false morel with a tan to yellow-brown head of rounded brain-like folds and a short, thick, deeply chambered white stalk. It fruits beside melting snowbanks in western mountain conifer forest.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
Fire Morel
Morels & Allies
A dark grey, fire-following morel of western conifer burns, coated in fine woolly down when young and often with a thickened, double-walled stalk base. It fruits in quantity in the first spring or two after a wildfire.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Grey Puffball
Puffballs
A small round grassland puffball whose white papery outer skin flakes away to expose a smooth lead-grey inner ball. It detaches from the soil and rolls about, scattering spores from a torn apical mouth.
Spore print · Purplish-brown
Fishy Milkcap
Gilled
A firm, apricot-orange milkcap that bleeds copious white latex and stains every damaged surface rich brown. Its strong shellfish-like odour, developing with age, is the quickest field character.
Spore print · White
Bay Cup
Cups & Discs
A dark bay-brown cup with an olive-flushed interior that grows on bare damp soil along woodland banks and path edges. Its scurfy paler exterior and irregular splitting margin are useful field characters.
Spore print · White
Cinnabar Chanterelle
Gilled
A diminutive chanterelle in vivid cinnabar red to pinkish-orange, with blunt forking ridges instead of true gills. It appears in scattered troops on the soil of eastern North American oak woods.
Spore print · Pinkish-cream to pale pink
Grey Knight
Gilled
A soft grey knight of pine woods, with a dry cap densely covered in fine radiating fibrils and scales, white sinuate gills and a brittle white stipe. It is the commonest of a confusing group of grey Tricholoma species.
Spore print · White
Black Knot
Other Fungi
A twig-inhabiting ascomycete of Prunus trees that turns branches into hard, coal-black, corky swellings several centimetres long. The knots are perennial and enlarge each year along the stem.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
Giant Puffball
Puffballs
An unmistakable white sphere that can reach the size of a football or larger, appearing in grassland and hedgerows. It has no stipe, no gills and no cap, and its interior ripens from firm white to a powdery olive-brown spore mass.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spore mass)
Slender Parasol
Gilled
A tall, elegantly slim parasol whose pale cap carries a distinctly pointed nipple at the centre and only fine, sparse scales. Its stem is slender and faintly fibrillose rather than boldly snakeskin-patterned.
Spore print · White
Variable Webcap
Gilled
A heavy-bodied webcap with a slightly greasy grey-brown cap, violet-tinted young gills and a swollen club-shaped stem base. It forms mycorrhizal partnerships with spruce and pine in northern and montane woodland.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Rainbow Chanterelle
Gilled
A conifer-associated chanterelle whose young cap carries a distinctive pinkish to salmon bloom over orange, contrasting with vivid egg-yolk false gills. It grows with spruce and pine across northern North America.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Frayed Parasol
Gilled
A medium-sized pale parasol of open pasture whose cap cuticle splits and peels back at the edge, leaving a characteristically frayed, ragged margin over white flesh. Its stem is plain whitish with no snakeskin pattern.
Spore print · White
Blistered Cup
Cups & Discs
A stout pale ochre cup that grows in crowded tiers on compost, straw and manured ground, its inner surface swollen into distinctive bubble-like blisters. The margin stays strongly inrolled and the outside is whitish and mealy.
Spore print · White
California Golden Chanterelle
Gilled
The largest chanterelle known, producing massive golden-orange fruit bodies under California's coast live oaks. Its sheer bulk, thick white flesh and blunt forking ridges make it unmistakable in its range.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Bleeding Conifer Crust
Crusts
A thin greyish crust on conifer wood with a wavy, finely hairy margin that turns out from the substrate, releasing red droplets where fresh tissue is scratched. It is the standard bleeding Stereum of pine and spruce.
Spore print · White
Blue Spot Knight
Gilled
A silky, pure white woodland knight whose cap and stipe base develop distinctive blue-green or pinkish spots and streaks with age. The white sinuate gills and complete absence of a volva place it firmly in Tricholoma.
Spore print · White
Common Earthball
Puffballs
A hard, squat, dirty-yellow ball with a thick rind broken into coarse polygonal warts, sitting half-buried on acid woodland soil. Cut vertically it shows a firm marbled purple-black interior even when young.
Spore print · Purple-black to blackish brown (spore mass)
Collared Earthstar
Puffballs
The largest common earthstar, whose thick outer wall splits into pointed rays and cracks around the central ball to leave a distinctive collar or saucer. The spore sac releases dust through a single fringed apical pore.
Spore print · Dark brown (spore mass)
Deadly Dapperling
Gilled
A small, squat dapperling with a pale cap broken into concentric bands of pinkish- to purplish-brown scales and a stem girdled below the ring with matching fibrous bands. It favours grassy urban ground and hedgerows.
Spore print · White
Ochre Spreading Tooth
Toothed
A spreading crust whose surface is packed with short salmon to ochre spines, often with a narrow, white-hairy shelf turned out along the upper edge. It grows on dead broadleaf branches and logs throughout temperate woodland.
Spore print · White
Bull-nose False Morel
Morels & Allies
A stout spring ascomycete with a bulging tan-brown head thrown into broad rounded lobes and folds, perched on a thick chambered white stalk. Its smoothly convoluted surface, without any true pits and ridges, sets it apart from the true morels.
Spore print · White to pale cream