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 “Possibly a Marasmius or similar small gilled mushroom”
Terracotta Hedgehog
Toothed
A small orange-buff hedgehog fungus whose cap underside carries crowded brittle spines instead of gills. It is slimmer and distinctly warmer in colour than the common Wood Hedgehog.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Girdled Knight
Gilled
A grey willow-associated knight that is unusual in its genus for having a distinct woolly white ring on the stipe. The small fibrillose-scaly cap and faintly yellowing gills complete the picture.
Spore print · White
Coconut Milkcap
Gilled
A small greyish-lilac birch associate with a dry, finely felty cap and decurrent buff gills. Its powerful coconut-like aroma, strongest in drying material, is the defining character.
Spore print · Pale cream
Red Edge Brittlestem
Gilled
A delicate brittlestem with a small bell-shaped cap on a long, thread-like white stem, and gills whose edges are flushed pink to reddish. The stem base often tapers into a rooting point.
Spore print · Blackish purple-brown
White Fibrecap
Gilled
A small, silky, ivory-white fibrecap with a sharp central point and gills that age from white to dull clay-brown. Common along shaded woodland paths from midsummer onwards.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Lilac Fibrecap
Gilled
A small silky fibrecap washed with lilac to violet tones and topped by a pointed umbo, its gills maturing to dull clay-brown. Frequently found alongside its plain white counterpart.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Flat Oysterling
Gilled
A small, white to buff, flattened fan-shaped bracket on rotting hardwood, whose brown spore print and finely lined, radiating gills separate it from all the white-spored oyster relatives.
Spore print · Pale brown
Sulphur Tuft
Gilled
A very common stump fungus forming crowded tufts of small sulphur-yellow caps with rusty centres, sulphur-yellow gills that age greenish then purple-brown, and a purple-brown spore print.
Spore print · Purple-brown
Pink Domecap
Gilled
A small grassland fungus with a neat rose-pink dome-shaped cap and matching pink stipe, contrasting sharply with crowded white gills. The white spore print separates it from the pink-spored grassland species.
Spore print · White
Conifer Mazegill
Polypores
A tough rust-brown bracket with a bright orange growing margin and an underside of thick, radiating, ochre-brown gill-like plates.
Spore print · White
Contrary Webcap
Gilled
A stout conifer webcap whose warm orange-tawny cap contrasts sharply with brilliant violet-blue young gills and a thick white club-shaped stem. Rusty brown spores overtake the blue with age.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Crepidotus crocophyllus
Gilled
A stalkless fan-shaped wood fungus with a whitish cap flecked with tawny-brown scales and distinctive saffron to orange-yellow gills that age brown. It fruits on decaying hardwood.
Spore print · Brown to cinnamon-brown
Frost's Amanita
Gilled
A small, brightly coloured eastern amanita with an orange cap, a strongly grooved margin, pale yellow warts, and a rounded bulb finished with a distinct collar-like rim.
Spore print · White
Fly Agaric
Gilled
The archetypal storybook mushroom: a scarlet or orange cap sprinkled with white warts, standing on a white stem with a skirt-like ring and a bulbous base ringed by concentric scaly girdles.
Spore print · White
Yellow Stainer
Gilled
A white Agaricus that flushes instant bright chrome-yellow when the cap margin is rubbed or the stem base is cut, and carries a distinctive ink-like odour. Young caps often have a flat-topped, squared-off profile.
Spore print · Dark chocolate-brown
Velvet Shank
Gilled
A tufted orange-capped mushroom with a slimy cap and a distinctive dark, velvety stem base, fruiting on hardwood stumps in the coldest months. The contrast between the bright cap and near-black stem is the giveaway.
Spore print · White
Apricot Jelly
Jellies
A striking salmon-pink to apricot jelly fungus forming translucent rolled funnels or tongues that push up from soil over buried conifer wood.
Spore print · White
Birch Milkcap
Gilled
A small tawny orange-brown birch associate with a matt, slightly wrinkled cap and a small pointed umbo. Its scanty white latex slowly turns yellow when smeared on a white tissue.
Spore print · Pale cream
Dog Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A slim, delicate stinkhorn whose tapering pale stalk ends in an orange tip smeared with dark spore slime. It has no separate cap, which distinguishes it from the larger Phallus species.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spores in the slimy gleba)
Lion's Mane
Toothed
An unmistakable white cushion of long, downward-hanging spines that grows from wounds on standing hardwoods, looking like a frozen waterfall or a shaggy mane.
Spore print · White
False Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a reddish to dark brown head thrown into irregular convoluted lobes like a brain or a crumpled turban, with no ridge-and-pit honeycomb. Cut vertically it is irregularly chambered rather than one clean hollow.
Spore print · Pale cream to yellowish
Common Jellyspot
Jellies
Minute orange-yellow jelly blobs scattered in numbers over damp dead wood and old fence posts, among the most frequently encountered of all small fungi.
Spore print · Whitish to pale yellow
Scarlet Caterpillarclub
Other Fungi
A small bright orange club fungus that grows out of the buried pupa or larva of a moth. Digging carefully beneath the club reveals the orange-stained insect from which it arises.
Spore print · White
Charcoal Loving Elf Cup
Cups & Discs
A small orange-tan stalked cup with a whitish scalloped rim that appears in troops on burnt ground the spring after a fire.
Spore print · Whitish