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 “Chicken of the Woods”
The Sickener
Gilled
A vivid scarlet brittlegill of damp conifer woodland and sphagnum, with a shiny cap whose skin peels almost to the centre, pure white gills, a white chalky stem and a white spore print.
Spore print · White
The Deceiver
Gilled
A hugely variable pinkish-tan woodland mushroom named for its shifting appearance, identified by thick, widely spaced flesh-pink gills and a fibrous twisted stem.
Spore print · White
Tumbling Puffball
Puffballs
A smooth round puffball that sheds its white outer skin to reveal a bronze to purplish-grey shell, hanging from a single tough cord until it breaks free and rolls. Common in open woods and pasture across North America.
Spore print · Olive-brown to dark brown
Pale Milkcap
Gilled
A plain, pale pinkish-buff milkcap of beech woods with a smooth, slightly greasy cap, crowded pale gills and copious white latex that does not change colour. Its very lack of markings is its most useful field character.
Spore print · Pale cream
Fenugreek Milkcap
Gilled
A large, dry, felty fawn milkcap of bogs and wet birch woods, with scanty watery latex and a powerful aromatic odour of fenugreek that intensifies as specimens dry. It is a reliable indicator of wet, acid, peaty ground.
Spore print · Pale cream
Weeping Bolete
Boletes
A slippery cinnamon-brown bolete of pine woods whose pale yellow pores exude milky droplets in humid weather, giving it its name. The ringless stalk is dusted with fine brown granular dots.
Spore print · Cinnamon-brown
Orange Jelly
Jellies
A bright orange, brain-like jelly of barkless conifer wood, distinguished by the conspicuous whitish point where it roots into the log.
Spore print · Pale yellowish to whitish
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
Palamino Cup
Cups & Discs
A broad, shallow tan cup fungus with a wavy, often split and outward-curling margin, appearing on rotting hardwood, wood chips and sawdust.
Spore print · White
Yellow-gilled Gymnopilus
Gilled
A colourful rustgill with a purplish-red, fibrillose-scaly cap and brilliant yellow gills that mature to rust, commonly clustered on wood chip beds.
Spore print · Rusty orange-brown
Wolf Lichen
Other Fungi
An unmistakable neon yellow-green shrubby lichen that forms bristly tufts on conifer bark and bare weathered wood in dry mountain forests.
Spore print · Not applicable
Glazed Cup
Cups & Discs
A small deep cup with a glazed white inner surface and a coarse brown bristly exterior, sitting on damp woodland soil and mossy rotting wood.
Spore print · White
Eyelash Cup
Cups & Discs
A miniature orange-red disc fungus rimmed with stiff black hairs like eyelashes, growing in troops on wet rotting wood and damp ground.
Spore print · Whitish
Waxy Crust
Crusts
A translucent, waxy-gelatinous layer that develops under the bark of dead oak branches, splitting and rolling the bark back to reveal itself on bare wood.
Spore print · White
Netted Fieldcap
Gilled
A delicate wood-inhabiting fieldcap with a slimy greyish-lilac cap embossed with a network of raised veins, and rusty-brown gills on a fragile white stipe.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Hericium abietis
Toothed
The largest of the western toothed corals, forming cream-white branched masses on dead conifer wood. It is the conifer counterpart of the hardwood-loving Hericium species and can reach the size of a football or larger.
Spore print · White
Apricot Jelly
Jellies
A striking salmon-pink to apricot jelly fungus forming translucent rolled funnels or tongues that push up from soil over buried conifer wood.
Spore print · White
Scaly Inkcap
Gilled
A clustered inkcap whose buff-brown bell-shaped cap is decorated with felty whitish veil patches. It fruits in tufts on hardwood stumps and buried wood.
Spore print · Black
Crown-tipped Coral
Corals & Clubs
A wood-inhabiting coral whose every branch ends in a small crown or cup ringed with tiny points, growing in rows along rotting hardwood logs.
Spore print · White
Angel Wings
Gilled
A thin, pure white, stalkless fan that grows in crowded troops on decaying conifer wood, with narrow crowded gills radiating from a pinched point of attachment.
Spore print · White
Geranium Brittlegill
Gilled
A beech-wood brittlegill in which cap, gills and stipe are all the same pale straw-honey colour, identified by that uniformity together with a strong smell of geranium leaves.
Spore print · Pale cream
Frosty Fibrecap
Gilled
A rich chestnut-brown fibrecap whose umbo carries whitish felted veil remnants like a dusting of frost. Frequent on beech-wood paths and calcareous banks.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Summer Bolete
Boletes
An early-season relative of the porcini with a dry, velvety, often crazed brown cap and a pale net covering the whole length of the stipe. Flesh is white and unchanging.
Spore print · Olive-brown
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