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 “Field Mushroom, Meadow Mushroom”
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
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
Pale Milkcap
Gilled
A plain, pale pinkish-buff milkcap of beech woods with a smooth, slightly greasy cap, crowded pale gills and copious white latex that does not change colour. Its very lack of markings is its most useful field character.
Spore print · Pale cream
Aleurodiscus oakesii
Crusts
A corticioid fungus that colonises the outer bark of living oaks, producing sunken, smooth grey patches studded with tiny cup- or disc-shaped fruiting bodies. The smooth, slightly depressed patches on an otherwise rough trunk are the easiest field character.
Spore print · White
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
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)
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