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 Dried Gilled Mushroom (Genus Psilocybe)

Golden Oyster

Golden Oyster

Gilled

A clustered oyster mushroom with bright lemon to golden-yellow caps that flatten into shallow funnels, with white decurrent gills on fused off-centre stalks.

Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey

Chanterelle

Chanterelle

Gilled

A solid egg-yellow funnel-shaped fungus whose underside carries blunt, forking, decurrent ridges rather than true gills. The flesh is white and fibrous and the odour is faintly of apricots.

Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish

Deer Shield

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

American Matsutake

American Matsutake

Gilled

A heavy white mushroom with cinnamon-stained cap fibrils, notched white gills and a thick sheathing ring, pushing up through sandy conifer duff. Its powerful spicy aroma is unmistakable in the field.

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

Egghead Mottlegill

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

Jack-o'-Lantern

Jack-o'-Lantern

Gilled

A vivid orange clustering mushroom of hardwood stumps with true, sharp-edged, deeply decurrent gills that can glow faintly green in darkness, and a pale spore print.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellowish white

Green Pepe

Green Pepe

Gilled

A very small, sticky-capped tropical Mycena whose gills and stipe emit a soft green light at night. It fruits in clusters on decaying palm fronds, bamboo and twiggy litter after warm rain.

Spore print · White

Blue Pinkgill

Blue Pinkgill

Gilled

A small but unmistakable New Zealand mushroom with an intensely blue, conical, pointed cap and pinkish gills that yield a pink spore print. It grows singly or in small groups in wet native forest litter.

Spore print · Pink

Western Jack-O'-Lantern

Gilled

A clustered orange mushroom flushed with distinctive olive-green tones, with long-decurrent orange gills that glow faintly green in darkness, fruiting from oak stumps and roots on the Pacific coast.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellow

Plums and Custard

Gilled

A striking conifer stump mushroom with a yellow cap densely covered in wine-purple fibrillose scales above bright egg-yellow gills.

Spore print · White

Indigo Milkcap

Indigo Milkcap

Gilled

An unmistakable milkcap with a silvery indigo-blue cap and gills that bleed dark blue latex, staining green where handled. It forms mycorrhizal partnerships with oaks and pines across eastern North America, Central America and parts of East Asia.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellow

Wine Cap

Wine Cap

Gilled

A large mulch-bed mushroom with a wine-red cap fading to tan, purple-grey gills, and an unmistakable thick white ring whose upper surface splits into radiating cogwheel spokes.

Spore print · Dark purple-brown to purple-black

False Chanterelle

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

Saffron Milk Cap

Gilled

A stout orange milkcap with concentric bands on the cap, decurrent orange gills, and carrot-orange latex that slowly turns the flesh green. It grows only with pines.

Spore print · Pale cream to buff

Saffron Milkcap

Saffron Milkcap

Gilled

A pine-associated milkcap with a concentrically zoned carrot-orange funnel cap, decurrent orange gills, carrot-coloured latex and a pitted stem, the whole fungus staining dull green where damaged.

Spore print · Pale ochre to buff

Maitake

Polypores

A large clustered polypore that builds a rosette of grey-brown, fan- to spoon-shaped fronds from a branched white stalk at the foot of old oaks. The undersides are covered in tiny white pores rather than gills.

Spore print · White

Violet Webcap

Violet Webcap

Gilled

A large, sombre, dark violet woodland mushroom with a dry felty cap, violet gills that rust over with maturity, and a cobwebby veil linking cap margin to stem.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Charcoal Burner

Charcoal Burner

Gilled

A common woodland brittlegill with a variably purple, green and slate-grey cap, unique in the genus for gills that are soft, greasy and flexible rather than brittle and shattering.

Spore print · White

Fragile Dapperling

Gilled

Perhaps the most insubstantial gilled mushroom in the field guide: a wafer-thin, deeply pleated yellowish-green cap stretched over its gills like a parasol skin, on a stem no thicker than a wire. It collapses to a smear within hours of opening.

Spore print · White

Rosy Bonnet

Gilled

A stout, evenly rose-pink bonnet of beech and oak litter, larger and firmer than most of its genus, with widely spaced pale gills and a pronounced radish smell.

Spore print · White

Amethyst Deceiver

Amethyst Deceiver

Gilled

A small woodland mushroom that is intensely violet when fresh and moist, with thick, widely spaced gills of the same colour and a fibrous, twisted stem. It fades so dramatically as it dries that it can look like a completely different species.

Spore print · White

Girdled Knight

Girdled Knight

Gilled

A grey willow-associated knight that is unusual in its genus for having a distinct woolly white ring on the stipe. The small fibrillose-scaly cap and faintly yellowing gills complete the picture.

Spore print · White

Milk-white Brittlegill

Gilled

A large, chalk-white funnel-shaped brittlegill that pushes up through the soil, often emerging still crusted with earth and litter. Its decurrent, widely spaced gills are unusual for the genus.

Spore print · White to pale cream