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 / Honey Mushroom”
Tremella encephala
Jellies
A pale pink to whitish gelatinous blob with brain-like folds, growing on conifer wood alongside its host crust fungus. Cutting one in half reveals a firm white core, a feature no other jelly of this colour shows.
Spore print · White
Yellow Coral
Corals & Clubs
A bulky coral fungus with a stout white trunk and crowded lemon to sulphur-yellow branches. The white flesh characteristically stains reddish then brown where bruised.
Spore print · Pale yellow-ochre
Red Cage
Stinkhorns
A startling stinkhorn that hatches from a whitish egg as a hollow, spherical cage of coral-red spongy arms, with dark olive spore slime lining the inner faces of the mesh.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
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
Crested Coral
Corals & Clubs
A small white coral fungus whose branch tips split into fine crests like miniature antlers. It grows from woodland soil and is often blackened at the base by a parasitic fungus.
Spore print · White
Common Brown Cup
Cups & Discs
A dark olive- to chocolate-brown cup fungus of woodland soil and leaf litter, appearing in spring with a paler, finely scurfy outer surface.
Spore print · White
Birch Polypore
Polypores
A smooth, pale, rubbery bracket that grows almost exclusively on birch, recognised by its rounded kidney shape, thick inrolled margin and fine white pore surface.
Spore print · White
Plums and Custard
Gilled
A striking conifer stump mushroom with a yellow cap densely covered in wine-purple fibrillose scales above bright egg-yellow gills.
Spore print · White
Maitake
Polypores
A large clustered polypore that builds a rosette of grey-brown, fan- to spoon-shaped fronds from a branched white stalk at the foot of old oaks. The undersides are covered in tiny white pores rather than gills.
Spore print · White
Silky Rosegill
Gilled
A tall pale mushroom of compost and cultivated ground with a slightly greasy grey cap, free gills that turn salmon pink, no ring, and a large white sac at the stem base.
Spore print · Pink to salmon pink
Plantpot Dapperling
Gilled
A vivid lemon-yellow little parasol that appears overnight in the compost of houseplants and greenhouse pots. Its powdery cap opens into a deeply pleated disc on a slender yellow stem and collapses within a day.
Spore print · White
Saffron Milk Cap
Gilled
A stout orange milkcap with concentric bands on the cap, decurrent orange gills, and carrot-orange latex that slowly turns the flesh green. It grows only with pines.
Spore print · Pale cream to buff
Wine Cap
Gilled
A large mulch-bed mushroom with a wine-red cap fading to tan, purple-grey gills, and an unmistakable thick white ring whose upper surface splits into radiating cogwheel spokes.
Spore print · Dark purple-brown to purple-black
Willow Bracket
Polypores
A rock-hard perennial hoof on willow and other broadleaves, grey to black and deeply cracked above with a rusty brown pore surface and layered annual tubes inside.
Spore print · White
False Coral
Corals & Clubs
A pale, tough, coral-like fungus whose flattened branches fuse sideways into fan-shaped or rosette-like masses on woodland soil. It looks like a coral fungus but belongs to the jelly fungus lineage.
Spore print · White
Fluted Bird's Nest
Other Fungi
A tiny vase-shaped fungus, shaggy and brown outside, with a silvery-grey inner wall marked by lengthwise grooves and a clutch of disc-like 'eggs' inside. The grooving separates it from every other common bird's nest fungus.
Spore print · Not applicable (spores held in peridioles)
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
Shaggy Scarlet Cup
Cups & Discs
A miniature scarlet goblet clothed in long white shaggy hairs, borne on a slender stalk from buried hardwood twigs. The combination of red interior and white woolly exterior is unmistakable.
Spore print · White
Pine Conk
Polypores
A woody, perennial bracket that forms hard hoof-shaped conks on the trunks of standing conifers, recognised by its cracked brown upper crust and irregular, maze-like yellow-brown pores.
Spore print · Yellowish brown
Yellow Stagshorn
Jellies
Bright orange-yellow antler-shaped branches with a tough, gelatinous, rubbery texture, rooting into buried conifer wood by a deep tapering base.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Veiled Lady
Stinkhorns
The most spectacular stinkhorn, with a delicate white lace veil that unfurls from beneath the conical head and may hang almost to the ground. A tropical and subtropical species of rich soil and bamboo litter.
Spore print · Olive-brown (spores in the slimy gleba)
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
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)
Violet Fairy Cup
Cups & Discs
A small violet to purple-lilac cup fungus that colonises burnt ground, old campfire scars and charcoal-rich soil.
Spore print · White