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 “Conecap or Conical Brittlestem”
Golden-Eye Lichen
Other Fungi
A small, shrubby orange lichen on twigs, distinguished by bright orange apothecia rimmed with hair-like cilia that give it an eyelashed, eye-like look.
Spore print · Not applicable
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)
Common Script Lichen
Crusts
A pale grey bark crust inscribed with fine black branching slits that look like handwriting or hieroglyphs across the trunk.
Spore print · Not applicable
Aspen Scaber Stalk
Boletes
A North American scaber stalk of aspen groves, with an orange-brown cap, dark scabers even when young, and pale flesh that greys and takes on lilac tones when cut.
Spore print · Ochre-brown
White Chanterelle
Gilled
A stout, chalk-white chanterelle of western North American conifer forests, with blunt decurrent ridges instead of gills and flesh that stains rusty orange wherever it is touched.
Spore print · White
Yellowing Brittlegill
Gilled
A small, fragile brittlegill whose entire fruiting body — cap, gills, stipe and flesh — discolours a deep honey-yellow with age or handling. It is common in damp mossy conifer woodland.
Spore print · Pale cream
Dead Man's Foot
Puffballs
A large, club- or foot-shaped fungus whose interior is packed with pea-sized chambers set in dark jelly, ripening from the top down into rusty brown dust. It grows on the poorest, most compacted ground.
Spore print · Cinnamon to rusty brown (spore mass)
Yellow-tipped Coral
Corals & Clubs
A large branched coral fungus with salmon to apricot-pink branches tipped in clear yellow, growing from woodland soil. Its flesh typically discolours brownish where bruised or cut.
Spore print · Pale yellow-ochre
Hericium abietis
Toothed
The largest of the western toothed corals, forming cream-white branched masses on dead conifer wood. It is the conifer counterpart of the hardwood-loving Hericium species and can reach the size of a football or larger.
Spore print · White
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
Chestnut Blight
Other Fungi
A bark-inhabiting sac fungus that forms sunken orange-brown cankers studded with pinhead-sized orange fruiting bodies. Fans of buff mycelium spread beneath the cracked bark of the affected stem.
Spore print · Not applicable
Blue Band Brittlegill
Gilled
A modestly sized conifer brittlegill with a delicately lilac to azure cap dusted with a fine bloom, often paler or ochre-tinted at the centre. Its gills and spore deposit stay close to white.
Spore print · White to palest cream
Hairy Earthtongue
Other Fungi
A small black club or tongue standing upright in mossy turf, its whole surface matt and velvety from projecting bristles. It is a classic indicator of old unimproved waxcap grassland.
Spore print · Brown-black
Shaggy Bracket
Polypores
A large, thick, coarsely shaggy bracket that starts bright rusty orange and ages through dark brown to black, growing high on the trunks of living broadleaved trees.
Spore print · Yellowish brown
Stinky Squid
Stinkhorns
A small stinkhorn with three or four tapering orange arms that rise from a short pale stalk and meet at the top, dark olive spore slime coating their inner faces.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Parrot Waxcap
Gilled
A small, wholly glutinous waxcap that emerges bottle-green and then fades through yellow, orange and pink, usually keeping a green flush at the top of the slimy stem.
Spore print · White
Depressed Hedgehog
Toothed
A small toothed fungus with an orange-tan cap dimpled at the centre and an underside of crowded brittle spines. It grows in sphagnum and moss beds under conifers.
Spore print · White
Artillery Fungus
Other Fungi
A pinhead-sized fungus that splits into a tiny orange star and fires a single dark spore ball several metres into the air. It swarms over damp bark mulch and rotting wood.
Spore print · Not applicable (spores in one ejected ball)
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
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
Bloody Milkcap
Gilled
A pine-associated milkcap of southern limestone woodland whose flesh releases dark blood-red latex the instant it is cut, with no orange phase at all.
Spore print · Pale cream to buff
Royal Bolete
Boletes
A striking butter bolete with a rose-pink to purple-red velvety cap over bright yellow pores and a yellow, finely netted stipe. Flesh yellow with little or no blueing.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Cauliflower Mushroom
Corals & Clubs
A large cream-coloured rosette of flattened, crimped, ribbon-like lobes that grows at the base of conifers, resembling a cauliflower head or a bath sponge.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Bluing Bolete
Boletes
A pale, shaggy-capped bolete of sandy heathland whose every surface flushes an intense cornflower blue within seconds of being touched or cut.
Spore print · Pale straw yellow