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 Chaga mushroom

Orange Mosscap

Gilled

A minute orange mushroom that dots mossy lawns and banks, with a navel-centred cap, deeply decurrent white gills, and a hair-thin stem.

Spore print · White

Golden Trumpet

Golden Trumpet

Gilled

A tiny tawny-orange mushroom with decurrent veined gills and a wiry dark stem, fruiting in dense swarms on mossy conifer logs and stumps.

Spore print · Pale buff to white

Common Funnel

Common Funnel

Gilled

A slender, pinkish-buff woodland mushroom whose thin cap develops a deep central funnel above crowded white decurrent gills.

Spore print · White

Giant Funnel

Giant Funnel

Gilled

A massive white funnel-shaped mushroom of open grassland that forms huge fairy rings, with tough flesh and very crowded decurrent gills.

Spore print · White

Dingy Twiglet

Dingy Twiglet

Gilled

A small, sombre olive-brown woodland mushroom with a finely velvety cap and a pale frosted gill edge, fruiting on fallen deciduous branches.

Spore print · Olive-brown to snuff brown

Common Conecap

Common Conecap

Gilled

A fragile grassland mushroom with a narrow conical tawny cap on a very slender striate stipe, distinguished by its rusty cinnamon-brown spore print.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Wood Woollyfoot

Gilled

A pliant, ochre-brown litter mushroom named for the dense woolly mat of pale hairs clothing the base of its stem and matting the surrounding leaves.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Pholiotina rugosa

Gilled

A small rusty-spored mushroom of mulch and lawns with a tawny wrinkled cap and, unlike the true conecaps, a distinct movable membranous ring on the slender stipe.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Powdery Piggyback

Gilled

A small parasitic mushroom that grows on decaying blackening brittlegills, its rounded white cap soon breaking into a brown powdery mass of asexual spores.

Spore print · White, rarely produced

Hebeloma crustuliniforme

Hebeloma crustuliniforme

Gilled

A pale clay-coloured woodland mushroom with crowded brown-maturing gills whose edges bead with droplets in humid weather, and a strong radish-like odour.

Spore print · Snuff-brown

Field Blewit

Field Blewit

Gilled

A stout grassland mushroom with a plain buff cap set on a striking blue-violet streaked stipe, fruiting in rings in old pasture after the first frosts.

Spore print · Pale pink

Shaggy Mane

Shaggy Mane

Gilled

A tall white cylindrical mushroom covered in shaggy upturned scales, whose gills blacken and dissolve into an inky liquid from the cap margin upward as it matures.

Spore print · Black

Coprinellus radians

Coprinellus radians

Gilled

A small tawny inkcap recognised less by the mushroom than by the conspicuous rusty-orange felted mat of mycelium, called an ozonium, that spreads across the wood beneath it.

Spore print · Blackish brown

Scaly Rustgill

Gilled

A small to medium tawny-yellow woodland mushroom of conifer debris, with a finely scaly cap, yellow gills that rust with age, and a bright rusty spore print.

Spore print · Rusty orange-brown

Wrinkled Peach

Gilled

An unmistakable rubbery-fleshed mushroom whose apricot to salmon cap is embossed with a raised network of pale ridges, growing on dead elm and other decaying hardwood.

Spore print · Pink

Brown Roll-rim

Brown Roll-rim

Gilled

A dull ochre-brown mushroom with a persistently inrolled, felty cap margin and decurrent gills that bruise dark brown and peel away from the cap flesh.

Spore print · Yellow-brown to sienna

Common Stump Brittlestem

Common Stump Brittlestem

Gilled

A densely tufted stump mushroom with a date-brown cap that dries pale from the centre outward, brittle hollow white stems, and dark purple-brown spores.

Spore print · Dark purple-brown

Violet Webcap

Violet Webcap

Gilled

A large, sombre, dark violet woodland mushroom with a dry felty cap, violet gills that rust over with maturity, and a cobwebby veil linking cap margin to stem.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Shaggy Scalycap

Shaggy Scalycap

Gilled

A dry, straw-yellow mushroom bristling all over with recurved brown scales, growing in crowded clumps at the foot of trunks and giving a rusty brown spore print.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Milky Conecap

Gilled

An extremely fragile white to cream conical mushroom of lawns and short grass that appears overnight and collapses within hours, betrayed by its rusty cinnamon spore print.

Spore print · Rusty cinnamon-brown

The Deceiver

Gilled

A hugely variable pinkish-tan woodland mushroom named for its shifting appearance, identified by thick, widely spaced flesh-pink gills and a fibrous twisted stem.

Spore print · White

Velvet Shield

Gilled

A handsome dark shield mushroom with a network of raised brown veins and scales across the cap and gills edged in a distinct dark brown fringe. It grows on decaying hardwood.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

Lion Shield

Lion Shield

Gilled

A slender golden-yellow shield mushroom with a velvety wrinkled cap centre, a finely lined margin and free gills that flush pink. It fruits on decaying deciduous wood.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

Flat Crep

Flat Crep

Gilled

A small white to buff fan-shaped mushroom attached sideways to rotting hardwood, with radiating gills that darken to cinnamon and no real stem. It often grows in overlapping tiers.

Spore print · Pale cinnamon-brown