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 “Oak Bracket / Maze Polypore”
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
Tripe Fungus
Jellies
Tiered brackets with a hairy, concentrically zoned grey-brown upper surface and a deeply wrinkled purplish, gelatinous lower surface that gives the species its name.
Spore print · White
Black Witch's Butter
Jellies
An olive-black gelatinous fungus forming warty cushions on dead oak branches, its upper surface studded with minute dark pimples that give it a rough, granular look.
Spore print · White
Violet-gray Bolete
Boletes
A handsome bolete with a deep violet-purple cap and matching stipe, white pores that age pink, and unchanging white flesh. A common oak associate in eastern North America.
Spore print · Pinkish-brown
Cinnabar Chanterelle
Gilled
A diminutive chanterelle in vivid cinnabar red to pinkish-orange, with blunt forking ridges instead of true gills. It appears in scattered troops on the soil of eastern North American oak woods.
Spore print · Pinkish-cream to pale pink
Sepia Brittlegill
Gilled
A dull sepia-brown brittlegill of grassy parkland and path edges, recognised by its strongly ridged cap margin and strong unpleasant odour. It is typically found under oak and lime.
Spore print · Cream
Flat Oysterling
Gilled
A small, white to buff, flattened fan-shaped bracket on rotting hardwood, whose brown spore print and finely lined, radiating gills separate it from all the white-spored oyster relatives.
Spore print · Pale brown
Bitter Oyster
Gilled
A small, tough, tan kidney-shaped bracket with a suede-textured cap and a stubby lateral stalk, growing in dense overlapping rows on hardwood; North American populations glow faintly green in the dark.
Spore print · White
Cortinarius orellanus
Gilled
A medium-sized tawny webcap of oak and beech woodland with a dry, finely scaly convex cap, thick distant cinnamon gills and a tapering yellow-brown stipe without veil belts.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Western Jack-O'-Lantern
Gilled
A clustered orange mushroom flushed with distinctive olive-green tones, with long-decurrent orange gills that glow faintly green in darkness, fruiting from oak stumps and roots on the Pacific coast.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Late Fall Oyster
Gilled
A cold-weather bracket with an olive to yellow-green tacky cap, crowded orange-yellow gills and a short stubby lateral stipe, fruiting on hardwood logs after most other mushrooms have finished.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
Wood Ear
Jellies
A gelatinous, tan to reddish-brown bracket shaped remarkably like a human ear, with a veined and folded inner surface and a minutely velvety outer face. It is strongly associated with elder and fruits through the coldest months.
Spore print · White
Bear Lentinus
Gilled
A stalkless, fan-shaped bracket with a dark velvety-hairy base and pale, sharply saw-toothed gills radiating from the point of attachment to dead hardwood.
Spore print · White
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
Stalked Puffball-in-Aspic
Puffballs
A small, brilliant red spore ball with star-shaped lips, sheathed in clear jelly and raised on a stalk of tangled gelatinous cords. It grows on bare mossy clay banks in oak-rich hardwood forest.
Spore print · Pale yellowish to whitish
Cloud Ear
Jellies
A rubbery, ear- or cup-shaped bracket on dead hardwood, greyish and finely hairy on the upper surface and smooth purplish-brown beneath, shrinking to a hard flake when dry.
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
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
Peeling Oysterling
Gilled
A stalkless buff to tan bracket-like gilled fungus on dead hardwood, unique for its gelatinous cap skin that stretches like rubber when peeled back from the margin.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
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
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
Small Chanterelle
Gilled
A miniature orange-yellow chanterelle, often no wider than a fingernail, scattered in moss beneath oaks. Its thin flesh, widely spaced blunt ridges and slender stalk are diagnostic.
Spore print · Pale yellow to whitish
Hen of the Woods
Polypores
A large rosette of many overlapping grey-brown spoon-shaped caps rising from a branched white stalk at the foot of oaks, with a white pore surface running down the branches.
Spore print · White
White-pored Chicken of the Woods
Polypores
Forms a broad rosette of soft salmon-orange fans on the ground at the base of oaks, distinguished from its relatives by a white to cream pore surface rather than a yellow one.
Spore print · White