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 “Chicken of the Woods”
Common Puffball
Puffballs
A pear- to club-shaped white puffball studded with conical spines that fall away to leave a pockmarked pattern, releasing spores through a pore at the top. It is one of the most frequently encountered woodland puffballs.
Spore print · Olive-brown spore mass
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
Early Morel
Morels & Allies
A thimble-capped spring ascomycete whose longitudinally wrinkled, tan to yellow-brown cap hangs free from the very top of the stalk like a bell. The stalk is stuffed with loose cottony pith rather than being hollow.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Smoky Spindles
Corals & Clubs
A grassland club fungus forming dense tufts of slim, unbranched, smoke-grey to pale pinkish-grey spindles that are hollow and very brittle. It is one of the classic indicator fungi of ancient, low-fertility turf.
Spore print · White
Bear's Head Tooth
Toothed
A large white hardwood fungus built from branching arms whose tips carry dense tufts of long, icicle-like spines. Its cascading, shaggy outline makes it one of the most recognisable fungi in eastern North American forests.
Spore print · White
Vinegar Cup
Cups & Discs
A deep brown goblet-shaped cup whose pale, branching ribs run up from a stout base far onto the outside of the bowl. It fruits in spring on lime-rich soil at woodland edges and along paths.
Spore print · White
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)
Blushing Morel
Morels & Allies
A pale, greyish to yellow-brown morel of mulch and disturbed ground whose ridges and stalk stain pinkish, rusty or ochre-brown where handled or with age. It is one of the earliest-branching lineages in the genus.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Northern Milkcap
Gilled
A large, greasy grey-violet milkcap of northern birch and spruce forests, with white latex that dries greyish or greenish on the pale gills. It is one of the most abundant Lactarius species in Fennoscandia and the boreal belt.
Spore print · Pale cream to pale yellow
Honey Mushroom
Gilled
A clustered honey-coloured woodland fungus with a finely scaly cap, a thick woolly ring and black bootlace-like cords running under the bark of its host. It is one of the most important tree parasites in temperate forests.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Hemlock Varnish Shelf
Polypores
A shiny, varnish-coated bracket with a mahogany-red upper surface and creamy white pore layer, fruiting almost exclusively on dead eastern hemlock. Its lacquered finish and conifer substrate make it one of the most recognisable shelf fungi of northern forests.
Spore print · Brown
Gem-studded Puffball
Puffballs
A small white to buff puffball shaped like an inverted pear, covered in detachable cone-shaped spines that leave a net-like pattern of scars when they fall. It releases spores through a neat apical pore in the top of the head.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spore mass)
Amethyst Deceiver
Gilled
A small woodland mushroom that is intensely violet when fresh and moist, with thick, widely spaced gills of the same colour and a fibrous, twisted stem. It fades so dramatically as it dries that it can look like a completely different species.
Spore print · White
Ergot
Other Fungi
A grass fungus that replaces a floret with a hard, curved purple-black horn projecting from the ear, which the following spring sprouts tiny pink drumstick-shaped fruiting heads.
Spore print · Not applicable (sclerotium, not a spore print)
Oak Leaf Blister
Other Fungi
A Taphrina sac fungus that raises pale, circular, dome-shaped blisters across oak leaves. The bulges are convex above and correspondingly hollowed on the underside.
Spore print · Not applicable
Ash Dieback
Cups & Discs
A minute white cup fungus that fruits in summer on the blackened leaf stalks of ash lying in the litter. Its asexual stage produces diamond-shaped bark lesions and crown dieback on living ash trees.
Spore print · White
Black Knot
Other Fungi
A twig-inhabiting ascomycete of Prunus trees that turns branches into hard, coal-black, corky swellings several centimetres long. The knots are perennial and enlarge each year along the stem.
Spore print · Not applicable
Bare-toothed Brittlegill
Gilled
A firm, muted pinkish-brown brittlegill whose cap skin shrinks back from the rim to expose a fine pale line of gill ends. It partners with oak and beech on well-drained soils.
Spore print · White to very pale cream
Parasitic Bolete
Boletes
A small olive-yellow bolete that grows nowhere except attached to the base of a common earthball, usually with several fruitbodies clustered around a single host.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Bolete Eater
Other Fungi
A parasitic fungus that engulfs boletes in a felty white coat which ripens to bright golden yellow, distorting the host until its pores and stipe are barely recognisable.
Spore print · Not applicable; golden-yellow powdery spore mass
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)
Sickener
Gilled
A vivid scarlet brittlegill of wet conifer woodland and bog moss, with pure white brittle gills, a white chalk-like stipe and a cap skin that peels away almost to the centre.
Spore print · White
Apple Scab
Other Fungi
A leaf- and fruit-inhabiting sac fungus of apples and crabapples that produces sooty olive-green spots with fuzzy, feathered margins. It overwinters in fallen leaves, where its minute flask-shaped fruiting bodies form.
Spore print · Not applicable
Gypsy Mushroom
Gilled
A sturdy ochre mushroom with a radially wrinkled cap dusted silvery-white over the centre, rusty-brown gills, and the unusual distinction of a true membranous ring on a webcap.
Spore print · Rusty ochre-brown