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”
Orange Bonnet
Gilled
A minute bonnet with a vivid orange to orange-red cap perched on a slender yellow stem, fruiting on wet twigs and fallen debris. Its size is measured in millimetres but its colour is unmistakable.
Spore print · White
Maple Tar Spot
Other Fungi
An ascomycete that lacquers maple and sycamore leaves with glossy black, tar-like blotches ringed in yellow, then fruits from the fallen leaves the following spring.
Spore print · Not applicable
Grass-green Russula
Gilled
An evenly grass-green brittlegill of birch woods, distinguished by its smooth unpatched cap, cream-ochre spore print and rusty spotting on ageing gills.
Spore print · Cream to pale ochre
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
Golden Scalycap
Gilled
A striking golden-orange Pholiota that fruits from wounds high on broadleaf trunks, with a glutinous cap bearing flattened darker scales and a rusty spore print.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Freckle Pelt Lichen
Other Fungi
A broad-lobed pelt lichen that turns vivid green when wet and is speckled with dark brown, wart-like cephalodia scattered across its surface.
Spore print · Not applicable
Death Cap
Gilled
A medium to large Amanita with a smooth greenish cap streaked with darker radiating fibres, white free gills, a pendulous ring, and a conspicuous white membranous sac enclosing the stem base.
Spore print · White
Myrtle Rust
Other Fungi
A rust of the myrtle family that coats expanding shoots, buds and young leaves in startling egg-yolk yellow spore powder, later leaving grey-brown scarred and distorted tissue.
Spore print · Not applicable (bright yellow spore masses)
Vinegar Cup
Cups & Discs
A deep brown goblet-shaped cup whose pale, branching ribs run up from a stout base far onto the outside of the bowl. It fruits in spring on lime-rich soil at woodland edges and along paths.
Spore print · White
Purple Jellydisc
Jellies
Clusters of rubbery reddish-purple blobs and shallow discs crowding dead beech stumps, alternating between a lumpy asexual form and neat spore-bearing cups.
Spore print · White
Purple Brittlegill
Gilled
A common brittlegill with a deep purple cap darkening almost to black at the centre, cream gills and a firm white stipe that ages dirty grey.
Spore print · Pale cream
Purplepore Bracket
Polypores
A small, thin, greyish bracket that covers conifer deadwood in dense rows and shows a lilac to violet pore surface when fresh.
Spore print · White
Pear-shaped Puffball
Puffballs
A small, smooth, pear-shaped puffball that fruits in crowded troops directly on rotting stumps and logs, joined at the base by conspicuous white mycelial cords. It is the only common puffball reliably found on wood.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spore mass)
Flat Oysterling
Gilled
A small, white to buff, flattened fan-shaped bracket on rotting hardwood, whose brown spore print and finely lined, radiating gills separate it from all the white-spored oyster relatives.
Spore print · Pale brown
Club Foot
Gilled
A grey-brown woodland funnel identified at a glance by its markedly swollen, club-shaped stipe base and deeply decurrent creamy-yellow gills.
Spore print · White
Hexagonal-pored Polypore
Polypores
A thin, orange-tinted polypore of fallen hardwood twigs whose underside is a striking honeycomb of very large, radially stretched hexagonal pores.
Spore print · White
Devil's Matchstick Lichen
Other Fungi
Slender grey stalks rising from a granular crust on shaded rock, each topped by a glossy black spherical head like a burnt match.
Spore print · Not applicable
Red Banded Webcap
Gilled
A large brick-coloured birch webcap, instantly known by the two to five bright cinnabar-red belts wrapped around its stout club-shaped stipe.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Russell's Bolete
Boletes
A tall, elegant bolete of eastern oak woods, instantly known by its extraordinarily long stipe carved with deep, ragged, shaggy ridges and by its cracked olive-brown cap.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Common Inkcap
Gilled
A clustered grey-brown inkcap whose egg-shaped cap opens into a ribbed bell and then digests itself from the rim inward, dripping away as black ink. It rises in dense tufts from buried wood in gardens, verges and woodland edges.
Spore print · Black
Butter Waxcap
Gilled
A small buttery-yellow waxcap with a slightly greasy cap, a dry stem and pale yellow gills that run a little way down the stipe.
Spore print · White
Nitrous Waxcap
Gilled
A drab grey-brown waxcap identified less by colour than by its sharp nitrous, bleach-like smell and fibrous, matt cap.
Spore print · White
Silky Pinkgill
Gilled
A common small brown grassland pinkgill with a silky, strongly hygrophanous cap, farinaceous smell and pink spore print.
Spore print · Pink
Oak Curtain Crust
Crusts
Thin, dark rust-brown tiers with wavy edges draped along oak stumps, with a velvety, smooth fertile surface and no pores.
Spore print · White