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 Honey Fungus

Common Jellyspot

Common Jellyspot

Jellies

Minute orange-yellow jelly blobs scattered in numbers over damp dead wood and old fence posts, among the most frequently encountered of all small fungi.

Spore print · Whitish to pale yellow

Green Skinhead

Green Skinhead

Gilled

An unusual olive-green webcap with a dry, finely felted cap, green gills that rust with age and greenish-yellow flesh. Green is rare among gilled fungi, making it easy to spot.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Scarlet Elf Cup

Scarlet Elf Cup

Cups & Discs

A vivid scarlet cup 1-5 cm across, lined with intense red on the inside and whitish and felty on the outside, growing on damp mossy hardwood sticks. It is one of the earliest and most colourful fungi of the year.

Spore print · White

Red-belted Conk

Red-belted Conk

Polypores

A tough perennial bracket recognised by a shiny resinous crust banded in red-orange with a cream to white growing edge, and a hard white context. It is among the most abundant decay fungi of conifer logs in northern forests.

Spore print · White

Hemlock Varnish Shelf

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

Beech Jellydisc

Beech Jellydisc

Jellies

Translucent, gelatinous pinkish-buff discs crowded together on fallen beech wood, often forming knobbly cushions. The soft rubbery texture and pale lilac tint distinguish it from darker jelly fungi.

Spore print · White

Pig's Ears

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