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 “Field Mushroom”
Silky Rosegill
Gilled
A tall pale mushroom of compost and cultivated ground with a slightly greasy grey cap, free gills that turn salmon pink, no ring, and a large white sac at the stem base.
Spore print · Pink to salmon pink
Plantpot Dapperling
Gilled
A vivid lemon-yellow little parasol that appears overnight in the compost of houseplants and greenhouse pots. Its powdery cap opens into a deeply pleated disc on a slender yellow stem and collapses within a day.
Spore print · White
Saffron Milk Cap
Gilled
A stout orange milkcap with concentric bands on the cap, decurrent orange gills, and carrot-orange latex that slowly turns the flesh green. It grows only with pines.
Spore print · Pale cream to buff
Wine Cap
Gilled
A large mulch-bed mushroom with a wine-red cap fading to tan, purple-grey gills, and an unmistakable thick white ring whose upper surface splits into radiating cogwheel spokes.
Spore print · Dark purple-brown to purple-black
Jelly Tooth
Jellies
A translucent grey to whitish gelatinous tongue whose underside is covered in soft, blunt spines, the only jelly fungus with a truly toothed fertile surface.
Spore print · White
Fragile Dapperling
Gilled
Perhaps the most insubstantial gilled mushroom in the field guide: a wafer-thin, deeply pleated yellowish-green cap stretched over its gills like a parasol skin, on a stem no thicker than a wire. It collapses to a smear within hours of opening.
Spore print · White
Sooty Milkcap
Gilled
A dry, matt, sooty grey-brown milkcap of broadleaved woodland whose white latex turns the pale flesh and gills salmon-pink within moments of cutting. That colour reaction is its defining field character.
Spore print · Pale ochre with pinkish tinge
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
Fishy Milkcap
Gilled
A firm, apricot-orange milkcap that bleeds copious white latex and stains every damaged surface rich brown. Its strong shellfish-like odour, developing with age, is the quickest field character.
Spore print · White
Bay Cup
Cups & Discs
A dark bay-brown cup with an olive-flushed interior that grows on bare damp soil along woodland banks and path edges. Its scurfy paler exterior and irregular splitting margin are useful field characters.
Spore print · White
Pale Milkcap
Gilled
A plain, pale pinkish-buff milkcap of beech woods with a smooth, slightly greasy cap, crowded pale gills and copious white latex that does not change colour. Its very lack of markings is its most useful field character.
Spore print · Pale cream
Aleurodiscus oakesii
Crusts
A corticioid fungus that colonises the outer bark of living oaks, producing sunken, smooth grey patches studded with tiny cup- or disc-shaped fruiting bodies. The smooth, slightly depressed patches on an otherwise rough trunk are the easiest field character.
Spore print · White
White Dunce Cap
Gilled
An extremely fragile white to cream conical mushroom of lawns that appears overnight and often collapses by midday, with rusty ochre spores.
Spore print · Rusty ochre-brown
Petticoat Mottlegill
Gilled
A tall, slim dung mushroom with a grey bell-shaped cap edged in white veil fragments and strongly mottled black gills.
Spore print · Black
Redlead Roundhead
Gilled
An unmistakable scarlet to orange-red mushroom of woodchip mulch, with a sticky cap, whitish fibrillose stem and dark purple-brown gills.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Deadly Galerina
Gilled
A small brown wood-dwelling mushroom with a hygrophanous tawny cap, a membranous ring on a smooth stem, and a rusty-brown spore print.
Spore print · Rusty brown
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
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
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
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
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
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
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