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 Caesar's Mushroom

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

Shiitake

Gilled

A tough-fleshed wood-rotting agaric with a dry brown cap that cracks into a pale crazed pattern, white notched gills and a fibrous, off-centre stem with a fleeting ring zone.

Spore print · White

Poplar Fieldcap

Poplar Fieldcap

Gilled

A clustering trunk-dwelling mushroom with a tan cap that wrinkles and cracks with age, cinnamon-brown gills, and a tough pale stem carrying a persistent spore-stained ring.

Spore print · Dull tobacco brown

Salt-loving Agaricus

Gilled

A dense, thick-fleshed white Agaricus of salty ground, with a cap that cracks into coarse patches, reddening flesh, a sheathing ring and a briny odour.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown

Psathyrella aquatica

Gilled

A small brown-capped brittlestem remarkable for producing its fruit bodies fully submerged in flowing cold water, first documented in a spring-fed river in Oregon.

Spore print · Dark brown to blackish brown

Yellow Stainer

Yellow Stainer

Gilled

A white Agaricus that flushes instant bright chrome-yellow when the cap margin is rubbed or the stem base is cut, and carries a distinctive ink-like odour. Young caps often have a flat-topped, squared-off profile.

Spore print · Dark chocolate-brown

Rooting Shank

Gilled

A tall, slender woodland mushroom with a wrinkled, greasy ochre cap, widely spaced white gills and a long tapering stem that continues underground as a deep root-like tail.

Spore print · White

Rooting Cauliflower

Other Fungi

A very large cream rosette of curled, ribbon-like lobes rising from a long tapering rooting base attached to conifer roots in western North America.

Spore print · White to pale yellow

Pink Oyster

Gilled

A tropical oyster mushroom forming shelved rosettes of bright salmon-pink fan-shaped caps with deeply decurrent gills, fading to buff with age.

Spore print · White to pale pinkish lilac

Neonothopanus gardneri

Gilled

A large Brazilian bracket-like agaric that grows from the leaf bases of babassu palms and glows a vivid yellow-green after dark. Its off-centre stipe, funnel-shaped tan cap and strongly decurrent gills are diagnostic.

Spore print · White

Lion's Mane

Lion's Mane

Toothed

An unmistakable white cushion of long, downward-hanging spines that grows from wounds on standing hardwoods, looking like a frozen waterfall or a shaggy mane.

Spore print · White

Hare's Foot Inkcap

Hare's Foot Inkcap

Gilled

A short-lived inkcap whose young cylindrical cap is wrapped in dense silvery-white wool like a hare's foot, then expands, splits, and curls back within hours. Common on woodchip and litter.

Spore print · Black

Fool's Funnel

Fool's Funnel

Gilled

A small white to buff funnel of lawns and short turf, marked by concentric frost-like zones on the cap and crowded decurrent gills.

Spore print · White

The Prince

The Prince

Gilled

One of the largest field mushrooms, with a squarish young cap patterned in fine golden-brown fibrous scales, a big pendulous ring and flesh that yellows slowly where handled. It smells strongly of almonds.

Spore print · Dark brown

Fly Agaric

Fly Agaric

Gilled

The archetypal storybook mushroom: a scarlet or orange cap sprinkled with white warts, standing on a white stem with a skirt-like ring and a bulbous base ringed by concentric scaly girdles.

Spore print · White

Golden Chanterelle

Golden Chanterelle

Gilled

A golden-yellow funnel-shaped fungus with blunt forking ridges instead of true gills running down a solid tapering stem, and a distinctive apricot-like scent.

Spore print · Pale yellow to cream

Garlic Parachute

Garlic Parachute

Gilled

A slender beech-litter mushroom with a pale hygrophanous cap on a disproportionately long, velvety blackish rooting stem, and an unmistakable strong garlic smell.

Spore print · White

Dung Roundhead

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

Enoki

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

Brown Mottlegill

Brown Mottlegill

Gilled

One of the commonest small brown mushrooms of mown lawns, with a two-tone drying cap and mottled dark brown gills that give a dark brown rather than black spore print.

Spore print · Dark brown

Pioppino

Gilled

A clustered wood-dwelling mushroom with a wrinkled tan cap, a firm white stipe bearing a persistent ring, and gills that darken from whitish to tobacco brown. It grows in tiers on poplar and other soft hardwoods.

Spore print · Tobacco brown

Coccora

Coccora

Gilled

A large, handsome Pacific coast amanita with a deep orange-brown cap that usually carries one thick, felty white patch of veil, a lined margin, and a deep sac-like volva.

Spore print · White

Veiled Oyster

Veiled Oyster

Gilled

A stout, thick-fleshed white oyster with a felty-scaly cap surface and a partial veil that leaves a fringed cap margin or a fleeting ring on the off-centre stipe. It fruits singly or in small groups from wounds on standing hardwoods.

Spore print · White