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 “Oyster 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
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
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
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
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
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
Flat Oysterling
Gilled
A small, white to buff, flattened fan-shaped bracket on rotting hardwood, whose brown spore print and finely lined, radiating gills separate it from all the white-spored oyster relatives.
Spore print · Pale brown
Peeling Oysterling
Gilled
A stalkless buff to tan bracket-like gilled fungus on dead hardwood, unique for its gelatinous cap skin that stretches like rubber when peeled back from the margin.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Variable Oysterling
Gilled
A tiny stalkless white fungus that grows in numbers on the underside of dead twigs and stems, its felted fan-shaped cap paired with a distinctive pale pinkish-brown spore print.
Spore print · Pale pinkish-brown
Roundspored Oysterling
Gilled
A minute white shell- or fan-shaped fungus that sits directly on fallen twigs and bramble stems, distinguished microscopically by its almost perfectly spherical spores.
Spore print · Pale ochre-brown
Ruddy Panus
Gilled
A tough, densely hairy little funnel- or fan-shaped mushroom in tan to rusty tones, with crowded decurrent gills that are lilac-tinted when fresh and fade to buff with age.
Spore print · White
False Turkey Tail
Crusts
A thin, fan-shaped bracket banded in tan, orange and brown that mimics the true Turkey Tail from above but has a completely smooth, poreless underside.
Spore print · White
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
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
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
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
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