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 “Russula or Lactarius species”
Yellow Patches
Gilled
A small to medium eastern North American amanita with a glossy orange-yellow cap sprinkled with bright chrome-yellow flakes of universal veil. The same yellow material dusts the ring and the swollen stem base.
Spore print · White
White-pored Chicken of the Woods
Polypores
Forms a broad rosette of soft salmon-orange fans on the ground at the base of oaks, distinguished from its relatives by a white to cream pore surface rather than a yellow one.
Spore print · White
Wheat Stem Rust
Other Fungi
The classic cereal rust, forming ragged brick-red pustules along wheat stems that turn coal-black late in the season, with orange cluster-cups on barberry in spring.
Spore print · Not applicable (rusty red spore masses)
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
Ruby Bolete
Boletes
A small, brilliantly red-capped bolete of parks and grassy woodland edges, recognised by yellow pores that bruise blue and tiny carrot-orange dots in the stem base.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Ruddy Panus
Gilled
A tough, densely hairy little funnel- or fan-shaped mushroom in tan to rusty tones, with crowded decurrent gills that are lilac-tinted when fresh and fade to buff with age.
Spore print · White
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
Common Rustgill
Gilled
An abundant orange-tawny wood-rotter of conifer plantations, identified by its smooth dry cap, yellow gills that become freckled with rust spots, and rusty spore print.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Hooded False Morel
Morels & Allies
An autumn false morel whose tan to dark reddish-brown cap is folded into a two- or three-lobed saddle or mitre rather than a brain. It grows on well-rotted conifer wood and woody debris.
Spore print · White to pale yellowish
Cloud Ear
Jellies
A rubbery, ear- or cup-shaped bracket on dead hardwood, greyish and finely hairy on the upper surface and smooth purplish-brown beneath, shrinking to a hard flake when dry.
Spore print · White
Blue Tooth
Toothed
A corky ground-dwelling toothed fungus recognised by the blue tint of its growing margin and the two-toned blue and orange zoning revealed when it is sliced lengthwise.
Spore print · Brown
Hollyhock Rust
Other Fungi
A short-cycle rust of the mallow family that studs hollyhock leaf undersides with orange-brown wart-like pustules, each matched by a yellow spot above.
Spore print · Not applicable (brown spore masses)
Roundspored Oysterling
Gilled
A minute white shell- or fan-shaped fungus that sits directly on fallen twigs and bramble stems, distinguished microscopically by its almost perfectly spherical spores.
Spore print · Pale ochre-brown
Fly Agaric
Gilled
The archetypal storybook mushroom: a scarlet or orange cap sprinkled with white warts, standing on a white stem with a skirt-like ring and a bulbous base ringed by concentric scaly girdles.
Spore print · White
Chaga
Polypores
A black, deeply cracked sterile mass that erupts from living birch trunks like a lump of charcoal, revealing bright rusty-orange interior tissue when broken.
Spore print · Pale brown (from hidden fertile crust)
Caesar's Mushroom
Gilled
A striking Mediterranean Amanita with a smooth orange cap, a strongly grooved margin, deep golden-yellow free gills and stem, and a thick white membranous sac at the base.
Spore print · White to pale cream
White Coral Jelly
Jellies
A cluster of thin, translucent white gelatinous lobes that fan out from dead branches like a frozen flower or a piece of crumpled tissue. Its near-colourless, seaweed-like fronds set it apart from every other jelly fungus.
Spore print · White
Wet Rot Fungus
Crusts
A thin, closely attached crust that starts creamy white and matures to olive- or umber-brown, its surface roughened with small warts and lumps. It grows on persistently wet dead wood outdoors and on damp timber indoors.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Peach Leaf Curl
Other Fungi
A spring-active sac fungus that turns unfolding peach and nectarine leaves into thick, crinkled, red or purple puckered blades. A whitish bloom of spore-bearing cells later coats the distorted surface.
Spore print · Not applicable
Elegant Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A slender, unbranched stinkhorn that rises from a white egg as a tapering orange-to-pink spike, its upper third coated in dark olive slime. Common in mulched beds and rich leaf litter across eastern North America.
Spore print · Not applicable (olive-brown gleba)
Conifer Chicken of the Woods
Polypores
Vivid orange overlapping shelves with a sulphur-yellow pore surface, fruiting on conifers in western North America. Substrate is the main character separating it from its hardwood-dwelling relatives.
Spore print · White
Hedgehog Mushroom
Toothed
A cream to pale apricot mushroom whose underside is covered in crowded, brittle, easily detached spines instead of gills or pores. It grows in troops and arcs on mossy woodland floors and often has an off-centre stipe.
Spore print · White to cream
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
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