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 “Possibly a Marasmius or similar small gilled mushroom”
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
Ghost Fungus
Gilled
A large Australian bracket-forming mushroom with a cream cap mottled in grey, blue and purple tones, decurrent white gills and a short eccentric stipe; its gills emit a striking greenish glow at night.
Spore print · White to cream
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
Lobster Mushroom
Other Fungi
Not a mushroom in its own right but a parasitic ascomycete that encases Russula and Lactarius fruitbodies in a pimpled, brilliant orange-red crust, twisting them into dense, contorted shapes.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
Parrot Waxcap
Gilled
A small, wholly glutinous waxcap that emerges bottle-green and then fades through yellow, orange and pink, usually keeping a green flush at the top of the slimy stem.
Spore print · White
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
Entoloma hochstetteri
Gilled
A small, startlingly blue-capped pinkgill of moist southern-hemisphere forests, unmistakable for the metallic indigo colour of its conical cap and slender fibrous stipe.
Spore print · Pink
Wood Blewit
Gilled
A thick-set, late-season woodland agaric coloured violet throughout when young, with a smooth greasy cap, sinuate lilac gills, a fibrous ringless stem and a pale pink spore print.
Spore print · Pale pink
Cauliflower Mushroom
Corals & Clubs
A large cream-coloured rosette of flattened, crimped, ribbon-like lobes that grows at the base of conifers, resembling a cauliflower head or a bath sponge.
Spore print · White to pale cream
California Agaricus
Gilled
A common lawn and garden Agaricus of the Pacific coast, with a pale silky cap, a flaring patch-bearing ring and pale greyish rather than bright pink young gills.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Indigo Milk Cap
Gilled
An unmistakable milkcap that is indigo blue throughout, cap, gills, stem and latex alike, with a concentrically zoned funnel-shaped cap that stains dull green where bruised or aged.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
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
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
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
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
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
Orange Mosscap
Gilled
A minute orange mushroom that dots mossy lawns and banks, with a navel-centred cap, deeply decurrent white gills, and a hair-thin stem.
Spore print · White
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
Small Chanterelle
Gilled
A miniature orange-yellow chanterelle, often no wider than a fingernail, scattered in moss beneath oaks. Its thin flesh, widely spaced blunt ridges and slender stalk are diagnostic.
Spore print · Pale yellow to whitish
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
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
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