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 Subaeruginosa Mushroom

Fuzzy Foot

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

Conical Brittlestem

Conical Brittlestem

Gilled

A strikingly tall, thin-stemmed mushroom with a narrow conical cap that dries from dark date-brown to pale tan, its surface set with fine erect bristles visible under a lens.

Spore print · Blackish brown

Weeping Widow

Weeping Widow

Gilled

A shaggy tawny-brown grassland mushroom whose blackening gills bead with dark droplets in humid weather. The hairy cap, veil-fringed margin and near-black spore print make it distinctive.

Spore print · Very dark brown to blackish

Piggyback Rosegill

Piggyback Rosegill

Gilled

A small white silky mushroom with a sac-like volva that grows directly out of the decaying caps of Clouded Funnel. Its free gills turn pink and it is one of the few fungicolous agarics.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

Scaly Shield

Scaly Shield

Gilled

A large pale shield mushroom whose whitish cap carries brown fibrillose scales over the centre, with free gills flushing pink and a stout ringless stem. It favours sawdust and mulch.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

Pluteus admirabilis

Pluteus admirabilis

Gilled

A very small, delicate golden-yellow shield mushroom with a wrinkled cap centre, a strongly lined margin and free gills that flush pink. It is common on decaying hardwood in eastern North America.

Spore print · Pink to salmon-pink

False Chanterelle

False Chanterelle

Gilled

A soft orange funnel-capped mushroom with crowded, repeatedly forked, deeply decurrent true gills and a white spore print. Despite the chanterelle-like shape it belongs to the bolete order, not the chanterelles.

Spore print · White to cream

Clustered Toughshank

Clustered Toughshank

Gilled

Crowded tufts of slim pale mushrooms whose long stems, densely coated in fine white hairs, fuse together at a common base buried in the leaf litter.

Spore print · White

Shaggy Ink Cap

Shaggy Ink Cap

Gilled

A tall, white, cylindrical mushroom clothed in shaggy upturned scales, whose gills pass from white through pink to black before dissolving into inky liquid. The movable ring and black spore print are confirming features.

Spore print · Black

Amethyst Deceiver

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

Fragile Dapperling

Fragile Dapperling

Gilled

Perhaps the most insubstantial gilled mushroom in the field guide: a wafer-thin, deeply pleated yellowish-green cap stretched over its gills like a parasol skin, on a stem no thicker than a wire. It collapses to a smear within hours of opening.

Spore print · White

Late Fall Oyster

Late Fall Oyster

Gilled

A cold-weather bracket with an olive to yellow-green tacky cap, crowded orange-yellow gills and a short stubby lateral stipe, fruiting on hardwood logs after most other mushrooms have finished.

Spore print · White to pale yellowish

Jelly Baby

Jelly Baby

Jellies

A small rubbery club fungus with a slimy ochre-yellow head perched on a paler stalk, usually appearing in troops on damp woodland soil. Its gelatinous texture and irregular, inrolled cap margin make it unlike any true gilled mushroom.

Spore print · Whitish (rarely taken)