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 “Tinder Conk and Turkey Tail”
Orange Mock Oyster
Gilled
A stalkless bright orange bracket covered in dense woolly hair, with deep orange gills radiating beneath, fruiting in overlapping tiers on dead logs in late autumn.
Spore print · Pinkish buff
Northern Tooth
Toothed
A massive tiered fungus that forms overlapping cream-coloured shelves high on living maple trunks, recognised by the crowded pendant spines that hang beneath each bracket instead of pores.
Spore print · White
Silverleaf Fungus
Crusts
A thin, tiered crust with turned-out bracket edges: white and hairy above, smooth violet-purple below. It is the cause of silver leaf in plums, cherries and other rosaceous trees.
Spore print · White
Mustard Yellow Polypore
Polypores
A thin tiered bracket of dead hardwood whose bright mustard-yellow velvety top contrasts sharply with a dark purplish to grey-brown pore surface of very fine pores.
Spore print · White
Yellowing Curtain Crust
Crusts
A tiered bracket-forming crust with a velvety, concentrically zoned upper surface and a smooth pale underside that stains distinctly yellow where it is scratched. The yellow bruising is its defining field character.
Spore print · White
Crimped Gill
Gilled
A tiny, tough bracket that forms tiered rows of tawny-zoned fans on fallen hardwood branches, its underside covered in crimped, forking white folds rather than true gills.
Spore print · White
Chicken of the Woods
Polypores
A vivid orange and sulphur-yellow bracket fungus forming large overlapping tiers on tree trunks, with a bright yellow pore surface and thick, soft flesh that fades to chalky white with age.
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
Blistered Cup
Cups & Discs
A stout pale ochre cup that grows in crowded tiers on compost, straw and manured ground, its inner surface swollen into distinctive bubble-like blisters. The margin stays strongly inrolled and the outside is whitish and mealy.
Spore print · White
Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A shelving, shell-shaped mushroom with white decurrent gills running down a short off-centre stem, growing in overlapping tiers on hardwood trunks. Colour varies from slate-grey and brown to almost white.
Spore print · White to lilac-grey