Mushroom Identifier

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 Bonnet Mushroom

Ringless Honey Mushroom

Ringless Honey Mushroom

Gilled

A honey-brown clustered wood fungus that matches the true Honey Mushroom in colour and habit but has no ring at all on its long tapering stem. It swarms in huge tufts around the bases of oaks and other hardwoods.

Spore print · White

Sky Blue Mushroom

Gilled

A small, intensely indigo-blue forest mushroom whose gills flush salmon-pink as its angular pink spores mature.

Spore print · Pink

Jack O'Lantern Mushroom

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

Pink Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A tropical and subtropical oyster mushroom forming rosettes of thin salmon-pink to rose fans on dead hardwood, the colour fading to buff as the fruit bodies mature.

Spore print · Pale pink to whitish

Eastern Cauliflower Mushroom

Eastern Cauliflower Mushroom

Other Fungi

A large cream rosette built from broad, flat, concentrically zoned leaf-like lobes, growing at the base of oaks and other hardwoods in eastern North America.

Spore print · White to pale yellow

King Oyster Mushroom

King Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

The heaviest of the oyster mushrooms, with a small greyish-tan cap perched on a thick club-shaped white stem, growing from the dead root crowns of umbellifers in dry grassland.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Elm Oyster Mushroom

Elm Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A firm, pale, smooth-capped mushroom that grows from wounds on standing elms and maples, distinguished from true oysters by its stout central-to-eccentric stipe and gills that are notched rather than long-decurrent.

Spore print · White

Branched Oyster Mushroom

Branched Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A cream to ochre oyster mushroom with deeply funnel-shaped caps growing in branched bouquets, identified by gills that run down the stem and fuse into a raised network.

Spore print · White to pale lilac

Blushing Wood Mushroom

Blushing Wood Mushroom

Gilled

A brown-scaled woodland Agaricus of conifer litter whose white flesh blushes vivid red within moments of being cut.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown

Black Poplar Mushroom

Black Poplar Mushroom

Gilled

A clustered brown-spored wood mushroom with a smooth two-toned cap that cracks in dry weather, a pale fibrous stipe and a persistent membranous ring.

Spore print · Tobacco brown

Chicken Fat Mushroom

Chicken Fat Mushroom

Boletes

A slender bright yellow bolete with a slimy, red-streaked cap and cottony veil fragments on the margin. It grows only with eastern white pine, often in large troops.

Spore print · Cinnamon-brown

Yellow-staining Mushroom

Yellow-staining Mushroom

Gilled

A white Agaricus of hedges and parks whose flesh flushes instant chrome-yellow when rubbed, most vividly in a cut stem base, and which carries a sharp phenolic odour. The young cap is characteristically squared off.

Spore print · Dark brown

Rosy Wood Mushroom

Gilled

A delicate, small-statured Agaricus with pinkish-lilac fibrils over a cream cap and a stipe base that flushes chrome yellow when handled. It fruits in woodland and park litter.

Spore print · Dark brown

Paddy Straw Mushroom

Paddy Straw Mushroom

Gilled

A tropical Volvariella that emerges from a dark, egg-like universal veil, leaving a thick sac at the stem base beneath a silky grey-brown cap with free pink gills.

Spore print · Pink to salmon pink

St. George's Mushroom

Gilled

A thick, cream-coloured spring grassland mushroom with crowded white gills, a stout ringless stipe and a strong mealy odour. It often grows in arcs and rings along hedge banks and downland turf.

Spore print · White

White Button Mushroom

Gilled

The familiar rounded white Agaricus with free gills that shift from pale pink to dark brown and a soft ring on the stipe. Wild forms grow on rich, composted or manured ground rather than on wood.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown

Phoenix Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

The warm-season oyster mushroom, with paler, thinner, more lung-shaped caps than the common oyster and a more clearly developed lateral stem.

Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey

American Caesar's Mushroom

American Caesar's Mushroom

Gilled

A brilliant red-to-orange Amanita of eastern North American oak and pine woods, with yellow gills, a yellow-orange skirt ring and a thick white sac at the base.

Spore print · White

Fairy Ring Champignon

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

Mycena chlorophos

Gilled

A minute, translucent grey bonnet of humid Asian and Pacific forests, famous for the pale green light its gills and cap emit after dark.

Spore print · White

Bleeding Fairy Helmet

Bleeding Fairy Helmet

Gilled

A delicate reddish-brown bonnet that exudes dark blood-red latex from its hollow stipe when broken, growing in tight clusters on rotting hardwood.

Spore print · White

Orange Mycena

Gilled

A vividly orange, sticky-capped bonnet that grows in dense tufts on hardwood logs and is instantly recognised by the bright orange edges of its otherwise pale gills.

Spore print · White

Pixie's Parasol

Gilled

A tiny Southern Hemisphere bonnet with a startling sky-blue to turquoise gelatinous cap, attached to rotting wood by a small basal disc. It is a signature fungus of cool, wet temperate rainforest.

Spore print · White

Flame Mycena

Flame Mycena

Gilled

A brilliant scarlet to flame-orange bonnet of western North American conifer duff, with orange gills edged in red and a tuft of orange fibrils at the stem base.

Spore print · White