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 “Honey Fungus / Honey Mushroom”
Phoenix Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
The warm-season oyster mushroom, with paler, thinner, more lung-shaped caps than the common oyster and a more clearly developed lateral stem.
Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey
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
Dry Rot Fungus
Crusts
A flat, spreading wood-decay fungus forming rusty-brown wrinkled sheets edged with a thick white cottony margin, best known from structural conifer timber in damp buildings. Its pale, cord-like strands can travel long distances across masonry.
Spore print · Rusty brown
False Coral Fungus
Corals & Clubs
A tough, leathery, whitish fungus whose flattened branches fuse sideways into fans and mats, looking like a coral but built like a jelly fungus.
Spore print · White
Domicile Cup Fungus
Cups & Discs
A pale whitish to buff cup fungus famous for fruiting indoors on damp plaster, concrete, sand and even carpet, often growing in irregular, contorted shapes.
Spore print · White
Coral Tooth Fungus
Toothed
A delicately branched white fungus whose thin arms carry short spines in neat rows along their undersides. It grows on dead broadleaf wood and looks like a piece of white marine coral fixed to a log.
Spore print · White
Orange Peel Fungus
Cups & Discs
Brilliant orange, thin and brittle cups that flatten, split and contort until they look exactly like scattered pieces of orange peel. It fruits in troops on bare compacted soil, track sides and gravelly ground.
Spore print · White
Wet Rot Fungus
Crusts
A thin, closely attached crust that starts creamy white and matures to olive- or umber-brown, its surface roughened with small warts and lumps. It grows on persistently wet dead wood outdoors and on damp timber indoors.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Zombie-Ant Fungus
Other Fungi
A parasitic fungus of carpenter ants that manipulates its host into clamping onto vegetation before killing it, then sends a wiry stalk out of the ant's head to release spores over the trail below.
Spore print · Not applicable
Horsehair Parachute
Gilled
A pinhead-sized brown parachute perched on a stiff black hair, often accompanied by tangles of black horsehair-like cords running through the needle litter.
Spore print · White
False Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a reddish to dark brown head thrown into irregular convoluted lobes like a brain or a crumpled turban, with no ridge-and-pit honeycomb. Cut vertically it is irregularly chambered rather than one clean hollow.
Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish
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
Jelly Tooth
Jellies
A translucent grey to whitish gelatinous tongue whose underside is covered in soft, blunt spines, the only jelly fungus with a truly toothed fertile surface.
Spore print · White
Tinder Conk
Polypores
An unmistakable hoof-shaped perennial bracket with a hard grey banded crust and a soft brown fibrous interior. It is one of the classic decay fungi of birch and beech across the northern hemisphere.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
Anemone Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A scarlet stinkhorn that hatches from a white egg into a starfish-like ring of forked arms surrounding a disc of dark, fly-attracting slime.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
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
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
Glue Crust
Crusts
A thin grey-brown crust on hazel, famous for cementing a dead branch to a living one so that it stays suspended in the canopy.
Spore print · White
Pink Oyster
Gilled
A tropical oyster mushroom forming shelved rosettes of bright salmon-pink fan-shaped caps with deeply decurrent gills, fading to buff with age.
Spore print · White to pale pinkish lilac
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
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
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