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 “Not a mushroom/fungus”
White-egg Bird's Nest
Other Fungi
A squat, crucible-shaped little cup, tawny-ochre and felty outside with a smooth pale interior, holding neat white disc-shaped 'eggs'. The white peridioles set it apart from the grey and black ones of Cyathus.
Spore print · Not applicable (spores held in peridioles)
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
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
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
Golden Cup
Cups & Discs
A vivid orange spring cup fungus of conifer duff whose margins and bruised areas stain a distinctive blue-green. It is one of the earliest fungi to appear at the edge of retreating snow.
Spore print · White
Apricot Jelly
Jellies
A striking salmon-pink to apricot jelly fungus forming translucent rolled funnels or tongues that push up from soil over buried conifer wood.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
White Brain
Jellies
A translucent white to greyish jelly that spreads along dead hardwood branches as glistening cushions which merge into folded, brain-like ridges.
Spore print · White
Stalked Lattice Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A tall stinkhorn with a slender whitish stalk carrying a globose, orange-red latticed head whose mesh spaces are filled with dark olive spore slime.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Toothed Cup
Cups & Discs
A small greyish-buff cup whose margin is cut into neat little teeth, growing on damp bare soil and mossy woodland paths. The toothed rim and pale, dull colouring set it apart from other soil cups.
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
Crowded Parchment
Crusts
Dense masses of small, thin, orange-tan fans that fuse along their edges to sheathe fallen hardwood twigs and branches. The underside is smooth and unbroken, with no pores or wrinkles.
Spore print · White
Columned Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A warm-climate stinkhorn built from two to five thick orange columns that are free at the base and joined in an arch at the top, with dark spore slime on the inner faces of the arch.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Red Coral
Corals & Clubs
A brilliantly red to scarlet branched coral of Pacific conifer forests, growing from deep needle duff. Some forms carry contrasting yellow branch tips.
Spore print · Pale yellow
Golden Coral
Corals & Clubs
A large, richly golden branched coral rising from a short whitish trunk, fruiting from soil in broadleaf woodland. Branch and tip colour is nearly uniform, without pink or salmon tones.
Spore print · Pale ochre-yellow
Native Bread
Polypores
An Australian polypore whose small funnel-shaped cap rises on a stalk from a large, hard, marbled underground sclerotium buried in forest soil.
Spore print · White
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