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 “Greasy Toughshank”
Striated Earthstar
Puffballs
An earthstar recognised by the flaring collar or skirt that spreads beneath its grey spore sac, combined with a sharply grooved, beak-like mouth on a short stalk.
Spore print · Dark brown (spore mass)
Powdery Brittlegill
Gilled
A medium-sized brittlegill with a matt, slate-blue to grey-green cap covered in a fine frosted bloom. It is common with oak in parks, avenues and open woodland.
Spore print · Cream
Pixie Cup Lichen
Other Fungi
A cup lichen whose stubby grey-green podetia flare into wide goblets with granular, pebbled interiors, rising from a mat of leafy basal scales.
Spore print · Not applicable
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
Powdered Ruffle Lichen
Other Fungi
A large pale grey lichen with broad ruffled lobes, black eyelash-like cilia along the edges and dense white soredia rimming the wavy margins.
Spore print · Not applicable
Hairy Curtain Crust
Crusts
A thin, tough, wavy bracket with a hairy, concentrically zoned grey-buff top and a completely smooth bright orange-yellow underside with no pores, gills or teeth.
Spore print · White
Winter Chanterelle
Gilled
A slender brown funnel-shaped chanterelle with shallow grey-lilac forking ridges and a hollow yellow stem, fruiting in mossy conifer woodland late in the season.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Western Black Elfin Saddle
Cups & Discs
The stout western counterpart of the black elfin saddle, with a large charcoal saddle-shaped head on a thick, deeply chambered pale grey stalk. It fruits in conifer duff along the Pacific coast and inland mountains.
Spore print · White
Horn of Plenty
Other Fungi
A thin-fleshed, hollow, grey-black trumpet that grows in dense troops among leaf litter. Its funnel shape, near-smooth outer surface and lack of any true gills make it distinctive.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Ghost Fungus
Gilled
A large Australian bracket-forming mushroom with a cream cap mottled in grey, blue and purple tones, decurrent white gills and a short eccentric stipe; its gills emit a striking greenish glow at night.
Spore print · White to cream
Black Morel
Morels & Allies
A conical spring morel whose pits are arranged in vertical ladder-like rows between ridges that darken to grey, olive or black. Like all true morels it is hollow throughout with the head fused to the stalk.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A shelving, shell-shaped mushroom with white decurrent gills running down a short off-centre stem, growing in overlapping tiers on hardwood trunks. Colour varies from slate-grey and brown to almost white.
Spore print · White to lilac-grey
Pearly Parachute
Gilled
A pale, silky-capped litter mushroom of beech woods, faintly washed with lilac-grey and growing in loose tufts from a white woolly base in the leaf mould.
Spore print · White
Angel's Bonnet
Gilled
A late-fruiting bonnet with an olive-grey to yellowish cap and a slender stem, growing in tufts on mossy hardwood. Fresh material carries a distinctive iodine-like smell.
Spore print · White
Hooded Tube Lichen
Other Fungi
A pale grey foliose lichen with puffed, hollow, tube-like lobes whose tips turn up and split open to release powdery soredia from the underside.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Bunt
Other Fungi
A smut fungus that hollows out wheat kernels and refills them with a mass of dark brown spores, producing fragile grey bunt balls with a distinctive fishy odour.
Spore print · Not applicable (dark brown spore mass)
Blue Cheese Polypore
Polypores
A small, soft, hairy white bracket that develops distinct blue-grey tints, especially on the pore surface and where bruised, growing in tiers on dead conifer wood.
Spore print · Pale bluish white
Black-staining Polypore
Polypores
A large clustered rosette of grey-brown fans at the foot of hardwood trees whose white pore surface and pale flesh blacken within minutes of being touched.
Spore print · White
Hoof Fungus
Polypores
A hard, grey, hoof-shaped perennial bracket banded with concentric ridges, growing high on birch and beech trunks and adding a new pore layer each year.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
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)
Trumpet Lichen
Other Fungi
A cup lichen with slim, gradually flaring goblets dusted all over in fine flour-like soredia, rising from a mat of small grey-green basal scales.
Spore print · Not applicable
Plum Pockets
Other Fungi
A sac fungus that transforms developing plums and sloes into elongated, hollow, stoneless bladders coated in a grey-white bloom. The distorted fruits hang conspicuously among normal ones.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Bonnet
Gilled
A tough-stemmed grey-brown bonnet with a radially grooved bell-shaped cap and pink-tinged, cross-veined gills, fruiting in tufts on hardwood stumps for most of the year.
Spore print · White
Foxy Bolete
Boletes
A firm-fleshed conifer scaber stalk with a deep fox-red cap, blackish scabers on a stout white stem, and flesh that greys strongly with blue-green tints at the base.
Spore print · Ochre-brown