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.
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
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
Field Blewit
Gilled
A stout grassland mushroom with a plain buff cap set on a striking blue-violet streaked stipe, fruiting in rings in old pasture after the first frosts.
Spore print · Pale pink
Field Mushroom
Gilled
The classic white mushroom of old pasture, with a dry silky cap, a thin fragile ring and gills that are a vivid bright pink when young before turning chocolate-brown. It fruits in troops and rings after rain.
Spore print · Dark brown
Fishy Milkcap
Gilled
A firm, apricot-orange milkcap that bleeds copious white latex and stains every damaged surface rich brown. Its strong shellfish-like odour, developing with age, is the quickest field character.
Spore print · White
Flame Shield
Gilled
A rare and vivid shield mushroom with a scarlet to orange cap that fades to yellow, free gills turning pink, and a slender pale stem yellowing at the base. It fruits on rotting hardwood.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Flat Crep
Gilled
A small white to buff fan-shaped mushroom attached sideways to rotting hardwood, with radiating gills that darken to cinnamon and no real stem. It often grows in overlapping tiers.
Spore print · Pale cinnamon-brown
Fleecy Milkcap
Gilled
A heavy chalk-white milkcap with a velvety fleecy cap, widely spaced cream gills that stain brown, and thick white latex from broken flesh.
Spore print · White to cream
Fly Agaric
Gilled
The archetypal storybook mushroom: a scarlet or orange cap sprinkled with white warts, standing on a white stem with a skirt-like ring and a bulbous base ringed by concentric scaly girdles.
Spore print · White
Fool's Funnel
Gilled
A small white to buff funnel of lawns and short turf, marked by concentric frost-like zones on the cap and crowded decurrent gills.
Spore print · White
Fool's Webcap
Gilled
A warm foxy-brown webcap of southern broadleaf woodland with thick, widely spaced saffron-rust gills and a plain yellowish stem carrying only faint cobwebby veil fibres.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Foxy Bolete
Boletes
A firm-fleshed conifer scaber stalk with a deep fox-red cap, blackish scabers on a stout white stem, and flesh that greys strongly with blue-green tints at the base.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
Fragile Brittlegill
Gilled
A small, extremely fragile brittlegill with a variably purple, wine or olive-centred cap. A hand lens reveals finely serrated gill edges, a rare and diagnostic feature.
Spore print · White
Franchet's Amanita
Gilled
A European amanita with an olive- to grey-brown cap sprinkled with soft yellow warts, a yellow-edged ring, and yellow veil belts on a swollen stem base.
Spore print · White
Freckle Pelt Lichen
Other Fungi
A broad-lobed pelt lichen that turns vivid green when wet and is speckled with dark brown, wart-like cephalodia scattered across its surface.
Spore print · Not applicable
Frost's Amanita
Gilled
A small, brightly coloured eastern amanita with an orange cap, a strongly grooved margin, pale yellow warts, and a rounded bulb finished with a distinct collar-like rim.
Spore print · White
Frost's Bolete
Boletes
A vivid lacquered blood-red bolete with dark red pores that weep amber droplets when young, and a deeply pitted, coarsely netted red stipe. Bruises blue instantly.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Frosty Funnel
Gilled
A white woodland funnel whose cap carries a silky, frost-like bloom, growing in troops and arcs through deep autumn leaf litter.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Gem-studded Puffball
Puffballs
A small white to buff puffball shaped like an inverted pear, covered in detachable cone-shaped spines that leave a net-like pattern of scars when they fall. It releases spores through a neat apical pore in the top of the head.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spore mass)
Gemmed Amanita
Gilled
A pale buff-yellow Amanita with scattered white cottony veil patches, a fragile ring and a small basal bulb finished with a narrow free collar.
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
Giant Funnel
Gilled
A massive white funnel-shaped mushroom of open grassland that forms huge fairy rings, with tough flesh and very crowded decurrent gills.
Spore print · White
Giant Polypore
Polypores
A huge overlapping rosette of tan-brown zoned fans at the foot of beech and other broadleaves, with a fine white pore surface that turns black wherever it is touched.
Spore print · White
Giant Puffball
Puffballs
An unmistakable white sphere that can reach the size of a football or larger, appearing in grassland and hedgerows. It has no stipe, no gills and no cap, and its interior ripens from firm white to a powdery olive-brown spore mass.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spore mass)
Gilled Bolete
Boletes
A bolete that wears gills instead of pores: thick, widely spaced, bright golden-yellow blades running down the stipe beneath a dry velvety brown cap.
Spore print · Olive-yellow to yellowish-brown
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
Goblet Waxcap
Gilled
A small scarlet waxcap shaped like a tiny chanterelle, with a scurfy funnel-shaped cap, deeply decurrent yellow gills and a long slender red stem.
Spore print · White
Golden Brittlegill
Gilled
A small, brightly coloured brittlegill with one of the deepest yellow spore prints in the genus. Its cap ranges through gold, apricot, orange and rose, often on a single flush.
Spore print · Deep yellow to ochre
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
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
Golden Scruffy Collybia
Gilled
A small, brilliant orange-yellow woodland mushroom whose cap is studded with pointed, granular scales, contrasting with widely spaced white gills on a shaggy yellow stalk.
Spore print · White
Golden Waxcap
Gilled
A clean lemon to golden-yellow waxcap with a viscid smooth cap and a slightly greasy yellow stem, one of the commonest and brightest species in autumn turf.
Spore print · White
Golden-Eye Lichen
Other Fungi
A small, shrubby orange lichen on twigs, distinguished by bright orange apothecia rimmed with hair-like cilia that give it an eyelashed, eye-like look.
Spore print · Not applicable
Goldenhaired Inkcap
Gilled
A small ochre-brown inkcap whose young cap is speckled with golden-brown veil granules; the gills blacken and deliquesce as the fruit body ages.
Spore print · Black
Goldleaf Shield
Gilled
A small shield mushroom recognised by the contrast between its wrinkled brown cap and its bright chrome-yellow stem. It fruits on decaying hardwood twigs and buried debris.
Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink
Gooseberry Brittlegill
Gilled
A slender purple-wine brittlegill of spruce plantations, recognised by its purple-flushed stipe, pale cream gills and a distinct fruity gooseberry smell.
Spore print · Pale cream
Graceful Bolete
Boletes
A slim, long-stemmed bolete with a velvety chestnut cap, white pores that age flesh-pink, and an unusual pinkish-brown spore print.
Spore print · Pinkish to reddish-brown
Gray Bolete
Boletes
A grey-capped hardwood bolete with a whitish stipe wrapped in a bold dark net and a yellow patch at the very base. Pale pores stain brownish where handled.
Spore print · Olive-brown to brown
Green Cracking Russula
Gilled
A firm green brittlegill whose dry cap skin breaks into a mosaic of angular patches over paler flesh, above chalk-white brittle gills and a stout ringless stipe.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Green Elfcup
Cups & Discs
A tiny turquoise cup fungus whose mycelium stains rotting hardwood a vivid blue-green. The stain is visible all year, while the small stalked saucers appear mainly in damp autumn weather.
Spore print · White
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
Green-spored Parasol
Gilled
A large lawn parasol of warm regions, unique among the big scaly agarics in dropping a green to grey-green spore print and in having mature gills that dull from white to sage green.
Spore print · Green to greyish-green
Greencracked Brittlegill
Gilled
An unmistakable brittlegill whose firm green cap breaks up into a mosaic of angular verrucose patches, paired with white brittle gills and a plain white stipe.
Spore print · White
Grey Knight
Gilled
A soft grey knight of pine woods, with a dry cap densely covered in fine radiating fibrils and scales, white sinuate gills and a brittle white stipe. It is the commonest of a confusing group of grey Tricholoma species.
Spore print · White
Grey Milkcap
Gilled
A thin-fleshed lilac-grey milkcap of damp birch woods whose white latex dries grey-green on the gills. The greasy, smooth cap and grey-staining pale gills are its key marks.
Spore print · Pale cream
Grey Spotted Amanita
Gilled
A robust European amanita with a grey-brown cap bearing flat grey veil patches, a grooved pendulous ring, and a swollen, grey-banded stem base that is not sharply rimmed.
Spore print · White
Grey Veiled Amanita
Gilled
A conifer-loving amanita with a smooth greyish-brown cap washed with purple, a grey membranous ring, and an abrupt rounded bulb finished with a sharp rim.
Spore print · White
Grisette
Gilled
A slender grey Amanita with a strongly grooved cap margin, free white gills, no ring at all, and a tall white membranous sac enclosing the stem base.
Spore print · White