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 “Red-Capped Butter Bolete”
Pink Waxcap
Gilled
An unmistakable rose-pink to lilac waxcap whose sharply conical cap splits and flares upward like a ballerina's skirt above a white fibrous stem.
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
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
Elm Oyster Mushroom
Gilled
A firm, pale, smooth-capped mushroom that grows from wounds on standing elms and maples, distinguished from true oysters by its stout central-to-eccentric stipe and gills that are notched rather than long-decurrent.
Spore print · White
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
Orange Bonnet
Gilled
A minute bonnet with a vivid orange to orange-red cap perched on a slender yellow stem, fruiting on wet twigs and fallen debris. Its size is measured in millimetres but its colour is unmistakable.
Spore print · White
Bleeding Bonnet
Gilled
A minute reddish bonnet that releases dark blood-red juice from its thread-like stem and carries matching dark red edges along its gills. It fruits in mossy litter in both conifer and broadleaf woodland.
Spore print · White
Panaeolus antillarum
Gilled
A comparatively large, pale-capped dung mottlegill of warm regions, with a smooth whitish to cream cap that cracks in dry weather and heavily mottled blackening gills.
Spore print · Black
Entoloma hochstetteri
Gilled
A small, startlingly blue-capped pinkgill of moist southern-hemisphere forests, unmistakable for the metallic indigo colour of its conical cap and slender fibrous stipe.
Spore print · Pink
British Soldiers Lichen
Other Fungi
A small Cladonia whose grey-green stalks are capped with vivid scarlet fruiting knobs, growing in colonies on rotting stumps, fence rails and acid soil.
Spore print · Not applicable
Charcoal Scalycap
Gilled
A small sticky-capped Pholiota restricted to burnt ground, appearing on old bonfire and campfire sites with a tawny cap, scaly stipe and clay-brown spore print.
Spore print · Clay-brown
Porcelain Fungus
Gilled
Glistening white, almost translucent caps coated in thick slime, clustered high on dead and dying beech, with a distinct ring on the slender white stem.
Spore print · White
Pig's Ears
Cups & Discs
A large reddish-brown ascomycete that begins as a deep cup and flattens into a wrinkled, ear-like saucer on decaying conifer wood. Its short ribbed stub of a stalk and pale, scurfy underside separate it from the true cup fungi.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Bell Morel
Morels & Allies
A thimble fungus with a smooth to faintly wrinkled brown bell-shaped cap attached only at the top of a slender pale stalk. The free-hanging margin and pith-filled stalk separate it from the true morels.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Psathyrella aquatica
Gilled
A small brown-capped brittlestem remarkable for producing its fruit bodies fully submerged in flowing cold water, first documented in a spring-fed river in Oregon.
Spore print · Dark brown to blackish brown
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
Slippery Jill
Boletes
A glutinous orange-yellow pine bolete with salmon-tinted pores and a thick, baggy, gelatinous ring that stains brown. Everything about it tends to be sticky.
Spore print · Cinnamon-brown
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
Heterobasidion annosum
Polypores
A perennial, irregularly shelving polypore found at the root collar and stump surfaces of conifers, recognised by its rough red-brown to blackish upper crust, sharp white growing margin and cream pore surface.
Spore print · White
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
Yellow Webcap
Gilled
A slimy-capped webcap in warm ochre-yellow, distinguished by pale bluish-violet young gills and a bluish stem apex above a glutinous, banded stem. Common with birch on damp acid soils.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Flame Mycena
Gilled
A brilliant scarlet to flame-orange bonnet of western North American conifer duff, with orange gills edged in red and a tuft of orange fibrils at the stem base.
Spore print · White
Green Pepe
Gilled
A very small, sticky-capped tropical Mycena whose gills and stipe emit a soft green light at night. It fruits in clusters on decaying palm fronds, bamboo and twiggy litter after warm rain.
Spore print · White
Bleeding Fairy Helmet
Gilled
A delicate reddish-brown bonnet that exudes dark blood-red latex from its hollow stipe when broken, growing in tight clusters on rotting hardwood.
Spore print · White