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 Oyster Mushroom

Silky Rosegill

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

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

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

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

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

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

White Dunce Cap

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

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

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

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

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

Wood Woollyfoot

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

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

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

Powdery Piggyback

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

Scaly Rustgill

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

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