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 Parasol Mushroom

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

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

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

Lion's Mane

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

Fool's Funnel

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

Hare's Foot Inkcap

Gilled

A short-lived inkcap whose young cylindrical cap is wrapped in dense silvery-white wool like a hare's foot, then expands, splits, and curls back within hours. Common on woodchip and litter.

Spore print · Black

The Prince

The Prince

Gilled

One of the largest field mushrooms, with a squarish young cap patterned in fine golden-brown fibrous scales, a big pendulous ring and flesh that yellows slowly where handled. It smells strongly of almonds.

Spore print · Dark brown

Fly Agaric

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

Golden Chanterelle

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

Garlic Parachute

Gilled

A slender beech-litter mushroom with a pale hygrophanous cap on a disproportionately long, velvety blackish rooting stem, and an unmistakable strong garlic smell.

Spore print · White

Dung Roundhead

Dung Roundhead

Gilled

A pale straw-yellow, sticky, almost perfectly hemispherical mushroom on a long slender stem, growing on the dung of grazing animals.

Spore print · Purple-black

Enoki

Enoki

Gilled

A cold-weather wood-rotter forming dense tufts of small, glossy tawny caps above dark velvety stems. Cultivated strains grown in darkness look completely different: long, pale, thread-thin stems with tiny white caps.

Spore print · White

Brown Mottlegill

Brown Mottlegill

Gilled

One of the commonest small brown mushrooms of mown lawns, with a two-tone drying cap and mottled dark brown gills that give a dark brown rather than black spore print.

Spore print · Dark brown

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

Matsutake

Matsutake

Gilled

A dense, heavy, white-fleshed woodland mushroom overlaid with cinnamon-brown fibrous scales, carrying a thick flaring ring and a strongly aromatic odour, fruiting in arcs beneath pine.

Spore print · White

Wood Blewit

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

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

Honey Fungus

Honey Fungus

Gilled

A clustered, honey-coloured woodland mushroom with a shaggy ring, white spore print and black bootlace-like rhizomorphs running under bark. It is one of the most significant tree-root parasites in temperate forests.

Spore print · White to pale cream

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

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

Split Gill

Split Gill

Gilled

A small, tough, hairy white fan growing sideways from dead wood, with gill-like folds split lengthwise down the middle that curl open and shut with the weather.

Spore print · White

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

Felt-ringed Agaricus

Gilled

A stout western North American Agaricus recognised by its thick felty ring with cottony patches, pinkish-brown fibrillose cap and yellow-staining bulbous base.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown