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 Tumor of a plant (Gall)

Green Cracking Russula

Green Cracking Russula

Gilled

A firm green brittlegill whose dry cap skin breaks into a mosaic of angular patches over paler flesh, above chalk-white brittle gills and a stout ringless stipe.

Spore print · White to pale cream

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

Crimson Waxcap

Crimson Waxcap

Gilled

The largest of the red waxcaps, with a deep blood-crimson greasy cap, thick waxy yellow-red gills and a fibrous streaky stipe that is distinctly white at the very base.

Spore print · White

Mica Cap

Mica Cap

Gilled

A small tawny-honey inkcap with a deeply grooved cap sparkling with mica-like granules when fresh, fruiting in dense clusters at the base of hardwood stumps.

Spore print · Dark brown to blackish

Scarlet Waxcap

Scarlet Waxcap

Gilled

A small, vividly blood-red grassland mushroom with thick, waxy, broadly attached gills and a smooth red stem, one of the classic waxcaps of ancient short turf.

Spore print · White

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

Summer Bolete

Summer Bolete

Boletes

An early-season relative of the porcini with a dry, velvety, often crazed brown cap and a pale net covering the whole length of the stipe. Flesh is white and unchanging.

Spore print · Olive-brown

Devil's Bolete

Devil's Bolete

Boletes

A massive, pale-capped bolete of warm limestone woodland, with blood-red pores, a squat bulbous stipe covered in a fine red net, and flesh that blues only slowly.

Spore print · Olive-brown

Fairy Inkcap

Fairy Inkcap

Gilled

A tiny pleated inkcap that fruits in swarming troops of hundreds around hardwood stumps, its pale buff bonnet-shaped caps carried on thread-thin white stems.

Spore print · Blackish brown

Common Fieldcap

Common Fieldcap

Gilled

A small ringless fieldcap of short turf, with a smooth hemispherical ochre-tan cap, slender pale stipe and dark brown gills and spore print.

Spore print · Dark 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

Olive Shaggy Parasol

Olive Shaggy Parasol

Gilled

The woodland member of the shaggy parasol group, its cap a muted olive-grey to greyish-brown with felty scales that barely stand out against the background.

Spore print · White

Rooting Cauliflower

Rooting Cauliflower

Other Fungi

A very large cream rosette of curled, ribbon-like lobes rising from a long tapering rooting base attached to conifer roots in western North America.

Spore print · White to pale yellow

Palamino Cup

Palamino Cup

Cups & Discs

A broad, shallow tan cup fungus with a wavy, often split and outward-curling margin, appearing on rotting hardwood, wood chips and sawdust.

Spore print · White

Waxy Crust

Waxy Crust

Crusts

A translucent, waxy-gelatinous layer that develops under the bark of dead oak branches, splitting and rolling the bark back to reveal itself on bare wood.

Spore print · White

Weeping Polypore

Weeping Polypore

Polypores

A massive lumpy bracket at the foot of oak trees, unmistakable when young for the beads of amber liquid that stand all over its buff upper surface.

Spore print · Whitish to pale yellow

Panaeolus cyanescens

Panaeolus cyanescens

Gilled

A slender pale-capped dung mottlegill of warm regions whose flesh and stipe stain blue-green where handled, with mottled black gills and a black spore print.

Spore print · Black

Ochre Bracket

Ochre Bracket

Polypores

A close relative of Turkey Tail that is thicker and stiffer, banded in warm ochre, tan and rust tones with a cushion-like swelling at the attachment.

Spore print · White

Snowy Waxcap

Snowy Waxcap

Gilled

A small, slender, entirely white waxcap with thick decurrent gills and a tapering stem, often the last waxcap still fruiting in the turf after the first frosts.

Spore print · White

Black Bulgar

Black Bulgar

Cups & Discs

Rubbery black top-shaped buttons crowding the bark of freshly fallen oak, with a shiny black fertile disc that leaves dark spore smudges on the fingers.

Spore print · Blackish brown

Iceland Moss

Iceland Moss

Other Fungi

An erect, tufted lichen of arctic and mountain heaths with curled chestnut-brown straps whose margins are fringed with tiny stiff spines.

Spore print · Not applicable

Columned Stinkhorn

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)

Birch Mazegill

Birch Mazegill

Polypores

A tough zoned bracket that looks like a Trametes from above but carries genuine radiating gill plates on its underside instead of pores.

Spore print · White

Birch Bolete

Birch Bolete

Boletes

A tall, slender bolete with a dull brown cap, off-white pores and a long white stipe roughened by vertical rows of small dark scabers. It grows only with birch.

Spore print · Snuff-brown to ochre-brown