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 “Common Mazegill”
Conifer Mazegill
Polypores
A tough rust-brown bracket with a bright orange growing margin and an underside of thick, radiating, ochre-brown gill-like plates.
Spore print · White
Birch Mazegill
Polypores
A tough zoned bracket that looks like a Trametes from above but carries genuine radiating gill plates on its underside instead of pores.
Spore print · White
Oak Mazegill
Polypores
A thick, corky, dull-coloured bracket on oak whose underside is carved into a deep labyrinth of thick-walled winding channels.
Spore print · White
Common Conecap
Gilled
A fragile grassland mushroom with a narrow conical tawny cap on a very slender striate stipe, distinguished by its rusty cinnamon-brown spore print.
Spore print · Rusty brown
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
Common Fieldcap
Gilled
A small ringless fieldcap of short turf, with a smooth hemispherical ochre-tan cap, slender pale stipe and dark brown gills and spore print.
Spore print · Dark 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
Common Earthball
Puffballs
A hard, squat, dirty-yellow ball with a thick rind broken into coarse polygonal warts, sitting half-buried on acid woodland soil. Cut vertically it shows a firm marbled purple-black interior even when young.
Spore print · Purple-black to blackish brown (spore mass)
Common Bunt
Other Fungi
A smut fungus that hollows out wheat kernels and refills them with a mass of dark brown spores, producing fragile grey bunt balls with a distinctive fishy odour.
Spore print · Not applicable (dark brown spore mass)
Common Funnel
Gilled
A slender, pinkish-buff woodland mushroom whose thin cap develops a deep central funnel above crowded white decurrent gills.
Spore print · White
Common Morel
Morels & Allies
A spring ascomycete with a pitted, honeycomb-like ovoid head fused to a hollow pale stalk, forming one continuous cavity from tip to base.
Spore print · Cream to pale yellow
Common Puffball
Puffballs
A pear- to club-shaped white puffball studded with conical spines that fall away to leave a pockmarked pattern, releasing spores through a pore at the top. It is one of the most frequently encountered woodland puffballs.
Spore print · Olive-brown spore mass
Common Bonnet
Gilled
A tough-stemmed grey-brown bonnet with a radially grooved bell-shaped cap and pink-tinged, cross-veined gills, fruiting in tufts on hardwood stumps for most of the year.
Spore print · White
Common Inkcap
Gilled
A clustered grey-brown inkcap whose egg-shaped cap opens into a ribbed bell and then digests itself from the rim inward, dripping away as black ink. It rises in dense tufts from buried wood in gardens, verges and woodland edges.
Spore print · Black
Common Stinkhorn
Stinkhorns
A white hollow spongy stalk topped by a thimble-shaped, deeply pitted head coated in olive-green spore slime, emerging from a partly buried white egg. Its powerful odour attracts flies long before it is seen.
Spore print · Olive-brown (in gleba slime)
Common Toadskin Lichen
Other Fungi
A small umbilicate rock lichen whose surface is raised into rounded blisters, giving it the warty look of toad skin, with matching pits on the underside.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Greenshield Lichen
Other Fungi
A broad, flat, apple-green rosette pressed to tree bark, with smooth rounded lobes at the edge and a wrinkled, powder-flecked centre.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Script Lichen
Crusts
A pale grey bark crust inscribed with fine black branching slits that look like handwriting or hieroglyphs across the trunk.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Powderhorn Lichen
Other Fungi
A Cladonia of tree bases and rotting stumps whose slender grey-green podetia taper to blunt points and are coated in fine flour-like soredia, rarely forming cups.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Orange Lichen
Other Fungi
A flat, leafy orange to yellow lichen forming rosettes on twigs, walls and coastal rock, with rounded lobes and crowded orange disc-shaped fruiting cups.
Spore print · Not applicable
Common Stump Brittlestem
Gilled
A densely tufted stump mushroom with a date-brown cap that dries pale from the centre outward, brittle hollow white stems, and dark purple-brown spores.
Spore print · Dark purple-brown
Common Ink Cap
Gilled
A clustered grey inkcap with an egg- to bell-shaped, faintly scaly cap that splits at the grooved margin and dissolves upward into black liquid, growing in tufts from buried wood.
Spore print · Black
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
Blushing Bracket
Polypores
A flat, radially wrinkled bracket in reddish and tan bands whose pale maze-like underside flushes distinctly pink-red wherever it is touched.
Spore print · White