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.
Common Orange Lichen
Other Fungi
A flat, leafy orange to yellow lichen forming rosettes on twigs, walls and coastal rock, with rounded lobes and crowded orange disc-shaped fruiting cups.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Powderhorn Lichen
Other Fungi
A Cladonia of tree bases and rotting stumps whose slender grey-green podetia taper to blunt points and are coated in fine flour-like soredia, rarely forming cups.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Script Lichen
Crusts
A pale grey bark crust inscribed with fine black branching slits that look like handwriting or hieroglyphs across the trunk.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A white hollow spongy stalk topped by a thimble-shaped, deeply pitted head coated in olive-green spore slime, emerging from a partly buried white egg. Its powerful odour attracts flies long before it is seen.
Spore print · Olive-brown (in gleba slime)
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
Conifer Chicken of the Woods
Polypores
Vivid orange overlapping shelves with a sulphur-yellow pore surface, fruiting on conifers in western North America. Substrate is the main character separating it from its hardwood-dwelling relatives.
Spore print · White
Conifer Mazegill
Polypores
A tough rust-brown bracket with a bright orange growing margin and an underside of thick, radiating, ochre-brown gill-like plates.
Spore print · White
Copper Brittlegill
Gilled
A sturdy orange-brown brittlegill of northern pine woods whose white flesh and stipe turn ash-grey and finally blackish as the fruiting body ages.
Spore print · Pale ochre
Corn Smut
Other Fungi
A smut fungus that turns maize kernels, tassels and leaves into swollen silvery-grey galls which rupture to release masses of sooty black spores. It occurs wherever maize is grown.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
Crab Brittlegill
Gilled
A robust brittlegill with a dark wine-red cap, ochre gills and a stipe flushed pink that browns wherever it is handled, accompanied by a strong smell of shellfish.
Spore print · Ochre
Cracked Cap Polypore
Polypores
A hard perennial conk almost restricted to black locust, its blackened upper crust splitting into deep blocky cracks above a rich rusty brown pore surface.
Spore print · Pale yellowish to whitish
Crepidotus crocophyllus
Gilled
A stalkless fan-shaped wood fungus with a whitish cap flecked with tawny-brown scales and distinctive saffron to orange-yellow gills that age brown. It fruits on decaying hardwood.
Spore print · Brown to cinnamon-brown
Crimson Waxcap
Gilled
The largest of the red waxcaps, with a deep blood-crimson greasy cap, thick waxy yellow-red gills and a fibrous streaky stipe that is distinctly white at the very base.
Spore print · White
Curry Milkcap
Gilled
A small dark chestnut-brown milkcap with a tiny pointed umbo and a powerful spicy, curry-like aroma that intensifies as the fruitbody dries. Its watery white latex does not change colour.
Spore print · Pale cream
Dark Fieldcap
Gilled
A sombre brown woodland fieldcap with a greasy, wrinkling cap and a persistent membranous ring that stains dark from falling spores. It grows on rich, often calcareous soil along shaded woodland paths.
Spore print · Dark brown
Darwin's Fungus
Cups & Discs
A globe-shaped orange ascomycete that erupts in clusters from woody galls on southern beech trees in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, its surface dimpled with honeycomb-like cups.
Spore print · White
Date Waxcap
Gilled
A rare and unmistakable waxcap combining a dark date-brown conical cap with vivid lemon-yellow gills and stipe.
Spore print · White
Dead Man's Fingers
Other Fungi
Swollen black clubs standing upright from decaying hardwood stumps like blackened fingers, tough and carbon-crusted outside with startling white flesh inside. It is a wood-rotting flask fungus present year-round.
Spore print · Black
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
Deadly Galerina
Gilled
A small brown wood-dwelling mushroom with a hygrophanous tawny cap, a membranous ring on a smooth stem, and a rusty-brown spore print.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Deadly Webcap
Gilled
A slender tawny webcap of damp northern conifer forest, identified by its sharply pointed cap umbo, widely spaced rusty gills, and pale yellow fibrous bands girdling the stem.
Spore print · Rusty brown
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
Deceiving Milkcap
Gilled
A small, pale pinkish-tan milkcap whose white latex turns bright yellow within seconds of exposure. A faint geranium-like odour and a preference for hornbeam and hazel help confirm it.
Spore print · Pale cream
Deer Mushroom
Gilled
A soft grey-brown wood-dwelling mushroom with free gills that turn pink as they mature, no ring and no volva, and a pink spore print.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Deer Shield
Gilled
The commonest of the shield mushrooms, with a deer-brown silky cap, free gills that turn from white to salmon-pink, and a fibrous ringless stem. It fruits on decaying wood almost year-round.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Destroying Angel
Gilled
An entirely white Amanita with a smooth silky cap, free white gills, a skirt-like ring and a prominent membranous sac around the stem base. Several closely related white species share the name across different continents.
Spore print · White
Devil's Bolete
Boletes
A massive, pale-capped bolete of warm limestone woodland, with blood-red pores, a squat bulbous stipe covered in a fine red net, and flesh that blues only slowly.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Devil's Cigar
Cups & Discs
A rare, cigar-shaped fungus that splits lengthwise into four to seven leathery rays, exposing a pale spore-bearing interior. It is known only from a few counties in Texas and from parts of Japan.
Spore print · White
Devil's Dipstick
Stinkhorns
A slim, tapering, orange to pinkish stinkhorn with no distinct cap, its pointed upper third coated in dark olive spore slime. It rises from a white egg in mulch and rotting hardwood debris.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
Dingy Twiglet
Gilled
A small, sombre olive-brown woodland mushroom with a finely velvety cap and a pale frosted gill edge, fruiting on fallen deciduous branches.
Spore print · Olive-brown to snuff brown
Dog Lichen
Other Fungi
A large foliose lichen with broad grey-brown lobes, a downy upper surface, and a white veined underside bearing long shaggy rhizines.
Spore print · Not applicable
Dryad's Saddle
Polypores
A large fan-shaped bracket patterned with concentric brown scales like a pheasant's plumage, set on a short off-centre stem with a black base.
Spore print · White
Dung Roundhead
Gilled
A pale straw-yellow, sticky, almost perfectly hemispherical mushroom on a long slender stem, growing on the dung of grazing animals.
Spore print · Purple-black
Dyer's Polypore
Polypores
A large, velvety, concentrically zoned rosette at the foot of conifers, rusty brown at the centre with a vivid yellow growing edge and olive-yellow pores that bruise dark brown.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Egghead Mottlegill
Gilled
A pale, egg-shaped dung fungus with mottled grey-black gills and, unusually for the genus, a distinct membranous ring on a long slender stipe. The cap is often shiny and wrinkled as it dries.
Spore print · Black
Elegant Sunburst Lichen
Other Fungi
A tightly appressed, brilliant orange rock lichen forming neat rosettes of narrow radiating lobes, common on bird-perch boulders in alpine and arctic country.
Spore print · Not applicable
Enoki
Gilled
A cold-weather wood-rotter forming dense tufts of small, glossy tawny caps above dark velvety stems. Cultivated strains grown in darkness look completely different: long, pale, thread-thin stems with tiny white caps.
Spore print · White
Entoloma hochstetteri
Gilled
A small, startlingly blue-capped pinkgill of moist southern-hemisphere forests, unmistakable for the metallic indigo colour of its conical cap and slender fibrous stipe.
Spore print · Pink
Ergot
Other Fungi
A grass fungus that replaces a floret with a hard, curved purple-black horn projecting from the ear, which the following spring sprouts tiny pink drumstick-shaped fruiting heads.
Spore print · Not applicable (sclerotium, not a spore print)
Fairy Inkcap
Gilled
A tiny pleated inkcap that fruits in swarming troops of hundreds around hardwood stumps, its pale buff bonnet-shaped caps carried on thread-thin white stems.
Spore print · Blackish brown
Fairy Ring Champignon
Gilled
A tough little tan grassland mushroom with a broad central umbo, widely spaced pale gills and a wiry pliant stipe, famous for growing in expanding fairy rings. Dried fruitbodies revive and refresh after rain.
Spore print · White
Fairy Ring Mushroom
Gilled
A small, tough-stemmed grassland mushroom with a tan, broadly umbonate cap and widely spaced pale gills, famous for growing in expanding rings and arcs on lawns and pasture.
Spore print · White
False Chanterelle
Gilled
A soft orange funnel-capped mushroom with crowded, repeatedly forked, deeply decurrent true gills and a white spore print. Despite the chanterelle-like shape it belongs to the bolete order, not the chanterelles.
Spore print · White to cream
False Death Cap
Gilled
A pale citron-yellow Amanita with flattened buff veil patches, a pendulous ring, an abruptly rimmed turnip-like basal bulb and a distinct raw-potato odour.
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
False Saffron Milkcap
Gilled
An orange spruce-associated milkcap whose carrot-coloured latex turns wine-red within half an hour and whose flesh and cap green strongly with age.
Spore print · Pale cream