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 Yellow-Staining Mushroom

Mycena chlorophos

Gilled

A minute, translucent grey bonnet of humid Asian and Pacific forests, famous for the pale green light its gills and cap emit after dark.

Spore print · White

Blue Pinkgill

Blue Pinkgill

Gilled

A small but unmistakable New Zealand mushroom with an intensely blue, conical, pointed cap and pinkish gills that yield a pink spore print. It grows singly or in small groups in wet native forest litter.

Spore print · Pink

Agaricus bohusii

Gilled

An unusual Agaricus that fruits in dense caespitose clusters, its caps streaked with dark brown fibrous scales and its stipes crowded and often bent. Favours nitrogen-rich soil under broadleaf trees.

Spore print · Dark brown

Dryad's Saddle

Dryad's Saddle

Polypores

A large fan-shaped bracket patterned with concentric brown scales like a pheasant's plumage, set on a short off-centre stem with a black base.

Spore print · White

Stubble Rosegill

Gilled

A large greasy-capped mushroom of disturbed rich ground, with free gills that turn deep salmon pink and a stipe seated in a conspicuous white sac-like volva but with no ring at all.

Spore print · Salmon pink

Maitake

Polypores

A large clustered polypore that builds a rosette of grey-brown, fan- to spoon-shaped fronds from a branched white stalk at the foot of old oaks. The undersides are covered in tiny white pores rather than gills.

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

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

Western Jack-O'-Lantern

Gilled

A clustered orange mushroom flushed with distinctive olive-green tones, with long-decurrent orange gills that glow faintly green in darkness, fruiting from oak stumps and roots on the Pacific coast.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellow

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

Jack-o'-Lantern

Jack-o'-Lantern

Gilled

A vivid orange clustering mushroom of hardwood stumps with true, sharp-edged, deeply decurrent gills that can glow faintly green in darkness, and a pale spore print.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellowish white

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

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

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

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

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

Spindleshank

Gilled

Tough, clustered mushrooms at the foot of oaks, with rust-spotted gills and a distinctive grooved, spindle-shaped stem that tapers into a twisted root.

Spore print · White

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

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

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

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

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