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 “Conecap or Conical Brittlestem”
Conifer Chicken of the Woods
Polypores
Vivid orange overlapping shelves with a sulphur-yellow pore surface, fruiting on conifers in western North America. Substrate is the main character separating it from its hardwood-dwelling relatives.
Spore print · White
Blushing Milkcap
Gilled
A very large, heavy white milkcap blotched with wine-red or vinaceous patches, distinguished by crowded pink gills and copious white latex. It grows exclusively with poplars and willows, often in dune slacks and damp sandy ground.
Spore print · Pale pinkish-cream
Hedgehog Mushroom
Toothed
A cream to pale apricot mushroom whose underside is covered in crowded, brittle, easily detached spines instead of gills or pores. It grows in troops and arcs on mossy woodland floors and often has an off-centre stipe.
Spore print · White to cream
Pacific Golden Chanterelle
Gilled
The large golden funnel-capped chanterelle of Pacific Northwest conifer forests, with blunt forking ridges instead of true gills running down a tapering stem. Its cap surface is finely fibrillose, often with a pinkish or brownish cast.
Spore print · Pale yellow to cream
Jelly Rot
Crusts
A soft, gelatinous crust that turns its upper edge outward into small white hairy shelves, with a shocking orange-pink wrinkled and ridged spore surface beneath. It sprawls in overlapping sheets across fallen logs in late autumn.
Spore print · White
Hygrophorus Milkcap
Gilled
An orange-brown North American milkcap recognised instantly by its very widely spaced, waxy-looking white gills and copious white latex that does not change colour. Its dry, velvety, wrinkled cap adds to the resemblance to a waxcap.
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
Black Trumpet
Other Fungi
A thin, hollow, vase-shaped fungus in dark grey to almost black, with a smooth or faintly wrinkled outer fertile surface and no true gills. It grows in dense troops in deep leaf litter, where its colouring makes it remarkably hard to see.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Wrinkled Club
Corals & Clubs
A white club fungus with thick, irregularly wrinkled and grooved stems that are unbranched or only sparsely forked. It grows from soil in woodland, often along shaded path edges.
Spore print · White
Pestle Puffball
Puffballs
A tall club- or pestle-shaped puffball with a rounded fertile head raised on a long thick sterile stalk. The head wall breaks away completely at maturity, leaving the stalk standing in the litter.
Spore print · Olive-brown spore mass
Yellow Swamp Brittlegill
Gilled
A striking pure chrome-yellow brittlegill of boggy birch woods, identified by its bright unfaded cap and by flesh that turns grey and eventually black where cut or bruised.
Spore print · Pale ochre
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)
Cortinarius rubellus
Gilled
A slender foxy-orange webcap of mossy conifer forest, recognised by its sharply umbonate fibrillose cap, thick widely spaced rusty gills and pale yellow bands on the stipe.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Cortinarius gentilis
Gilled
A small, slender, tawny-orange webcap of mossy conifer forest, with thick widely spaced ochre gills and yellowish veil bands on a slim stem. Its dry silky cap carries a sharp umbo.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Crowded Parchment
Crusts
Dense masses of small, thin, orange-tan fans that fuse along their edges to sheathe fallen hardwood twigs and branches. The underside is smooth and unbroken, with no pores or wrinkles.
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
Springtime Amanita
Gilled
A spring-fruiting California amanita with a salmon-orange to peach cap, a strongly grooved margin, buff-tinted gills, and a thick sac-like volva. The ring is usually absent.
Spore print · White
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
Chicken of the Woods
Polypores
A vivid orange and sulphur-yellow bracket fungus forming large overlapping tiers on tree trunks, with a bright yellow pore surface and thick, soft flesh that fades to chalky white with age.
Spore print · White
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
Small Chanterelle
Gilled
A miniature orange-yellow chanterelle, often no wider than a fingernail, scattered in moss beneath oaks. Its thin flesh, widely spaced blunt ridges and slender stalk are diagnostic.
Spore print · Pale yellow to whitish
Fuzzy Foot
Gilled
A tiny orange-brown bell-shaped mushroom that erupts in enormous swarms across mossy conifer logs, recognised by decurrent veined gills and a tuft of tawny fuzz at the stipe base.
Spore print · White
Elastic Saddle
Cups & Discs
A slim, graceful saddle fungus with a buff to greyish two-lobed head balanced on a thin, perfectly smooth stalk. The absence of ribs or flutes on the stem is its most useful distinguishing feature.
Spore print · White
Devil's Dipstick
Stinkhorns
A slim, tapering, orange to pinkish stinkhorn with no distinct cap, its pointed upper third coated in dark olive spore slime. It rises from a white egg in mulch and rotting hardwood debris.
Spore print · Not applicable