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 Fringed Polypore

Bulbous Honey Fungus

Gilled

A honey fungus of deciduous woodland recognised by its distinctly swollen club-shaped stipe base, fine yellowish cap scales and fragile cobwebby yellow-fringed ring.

Spore print · White

Iceland Moss

Iceland Moss

Other Fungi

An erect, tufted lichen of arctic and mountain heaths with curled chestnut-brown straps whose margins are fringed with tiny stiff spines.

Spore print · Not applicable

Shield Dapperling

Gilled

A slender woodland dapperling with an ochre-brown scaly cap, a shaggy fringed margin, and a stem sheathed below the vague ring in loose woolly cotton like a rolled-down sock.

Spore print · White

Weeping Widow

Weeping Widow

Gilled

A shaggy tawny-brown grassland mushroom whose blackening gills bead with dark droplets in humid weather. The hairy cap, veil-fringed margin and near-black spore print make it distinctive.

Spore print · Very dark brown to blackish

Wrinkled Crust

Crusts

A waxy salmon to purplish-orange crust whose centre is thrown into radiating folds and warts, with a paler smooth fringe at the edge.

Spore print · White

Starfish Fungus

Stinkhorns

A stinkhorn shaped like a sea anemone: a hollow pale stalk expands into a red disc fringed with forked arms, with dark olive spore slime pooled in the centre.

Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)

Earthfan

Other Fungi

A tough, fibrous fungus forming overlapping rust- to chocolate-brown fans and rosettes on sandy ground, with a pale fringed edge and a warty, purplish-brown underside. It is a familiar sight around young pines on heathland and in nurseries.

Spore print · Purple-brown

Pale Brittlestem

Gilled

A fragile, pale-capped clustering mushroom with a toothed veil fringe on the cap edge, gills that shift from white through grey to purple-brown, and a brittle hollow white stem.

Spore print · Purple-brown

Hebeloma sacchariolens

Gilled

A pale, unassuming woodland Hebeloma recognised chiefly by its extremely strong sweet, scorched-sugar scent, clay-brown spore deposit and finely fringed gill edges.

Spore print · Clay-brown

Velvet Shield

Gilled

A handsome dark shield mushroom with a network of raised brown veins and scales across the cap and gills edged in a distinct dark brown fringe. It grows on decaying hardwood.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

Collared Earthstar

Collared Earthstar

Puffballs

The largest common earthstar, whose thick outer wall splits into pointed rays and cracks around the central ball to leave a distinctive collar or saucer. The spore sac releases dust through a single fringed apical pore.

Spore print · Dark brown (spore mass)

Split Porecrust

Polypores

An extremely common white to cream resupinate polypore whose pores split and fray, becoming maze-like and finally tooth-like towards the centre.

Spore print · White

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

Native Bread

Polypores

An Australian polypore whose small funnel-shaped cap rises on a stalk from a large, hard, marbled underground sclerotium buried in forest soil.

Spore print · White

Heterobasidion annosum

Heterobasidion annosum

Polypores

A perennial, irregularly shelving polypore found at the root collar and stump surfaces of conifers, recognised by its rough red-brown to blackish upper crust, sharp white growing margin and cream pore surface.

Spore print · White

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

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

Perigord Black Truffle

Other Fungi

A hypogeous ascomycete forming rounded black tubers covered in small pyramidal warts, with a purple-black interior finely marbled by white veins.

Spore print · Not applicable (hypogeous)