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 Golden Oyster

Golden Oyster

Golden Oyster

Gilled

A clustered oyster mushroom with bright lemon to golden-yellow caps that flatten into shallow funnels, with white decurrent gills on fused off-centre stalks.

Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey

Golden Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A vivid golden-yellow oyster mushroom that grows in dense bouquets from dead hardwood, its thin funnel-shaped caps fading to pale ochre as they age.

Spore print · White to pale lilac

Oyster Mushroom

Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A shelving, shell-shaped mushroom with white decurrent gills running down a short off-centre stem, growing in overlapping tiers on hardwood trunks. Colour varies from slate-grey and brown to almost white.

Spore print · White to lilac-grey

Veiled Oyster

Gilled

A stout, thick-fleshed white oyster with a felty-scaly cap surface and a partial veil that leaves a fringed cap margin or a fleeting ring on the off-centre stipe. It fruits singly or in small groups from wounds on standing hardwoods.

Spore print · White

Oyster Rollrim

Gilled

A stalkless ochre to yellow-brown fan on conifer wood, recognised by its inrolled wavy margin and soft, crowded, strongly forked and cross-veined orange-buff gills that separate easily from the flesh.

Spore print · Pale yellowish brown

Bitter Oyster

Gilled

A small, tough, tan kidney-shaped bracket with a suede-textured cap and a stubby lateral stalk, growing in dense overlapping rows on hardwood; North American populations glow faintly green in the dark.

Spore print · White

Pink Oyster

Gilled

A tropical oyster mushroom forming shelved rosettes of bright salmon-pink fan-shaped caps with deeply decurrent gills, fading to buff with age.

Spore print · White to pale pinkish lilac

Golden Trumpet

Gilled

A tiny tawny-orange mushroom with decurrent veined gills and a wiry dark stem, fruiting in dense swarms on mossy conifer logs and stumps.

Spore print · Pale buff to white

Golden Scalycap

Gilled

A striking golden-orange Pholiota that fruits from wounds high on broadleaf trunks, with a glutinous cap bearing flattened darker scales and a rusty spore print.

Spore print · Rusty brown

Golden Cup

Cups & Discs

A vivid orange spring cup fungus of conifer duff whose margins and bruised areas stain a distinctive blue-green. It is one of the earliest fungi to appear at the edge of retreating snow.

Spore print · White

Golden Spindles

Corals & Clubs

Vivid egg-yellow spindles that fuse at the base into tight bundles, each club tapering to a fine point that browns with age. A signature fungus of old, unfertilised turf.

Spore print · White

Orange Mock Oyster

Gilled

A stalkless bright orange bracket covered in dense woolly hair, with deep orange gills radiating beneath, fruiting in overlapping tiers on dead logs in late autumn.

Spore print · Pinkish buff

Pink Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A tropical and subtropical oyster mushroom forming rosettes of thin salmon-pink to rose fans on dead hardwood, the colour fading to buff as the fruit bodies mature.

Spore print · Pale pink to whitish

Aspen Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A North American oyster mushroom restricted to dead aspen and cottonwood, with pale fleshy caps in overlapping shelves and a buff-tinted rather than lilac spore print.

Spore print · White to pale buff

Elm Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A firm, pale, smooth-capped mushroom that grows from wounds on standing elms and maples, distinguished from true oysters by its stout central-to-eccentric stipe and gills that are notched rather than long-decurrent.

Spore print · White

Phoenix Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

The warm-season oyster mushroom, with paler, thinner, more lung-shaped caps than the common oyster and a more clearly developed lateral stem.

Spore print · White to pale lilac-grey

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

Branched Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

A cream to ochre oyster mushroom with deeply funnel-shaped caps growing in branched bouquets, identified by gills that run down the stem and fuse into a raised network.

Spore print · White to pale lilac

King Oyster Mushroom

Gilled

The heaviest of the oyster mushrooms, with a small greyish-tan cap perched on a thick club-shaped white stem, growing from the dead root crowns of umbellifers in dry grassland.

Spore print · White to pale cream

Golden Brittlegill

Golden Brittlegill

Gilled

A small, brightly coloured brittlegill with one of the deepest yellow spore prints in the genus. Its cap ranges through gold, apricot, orange and rose, often on a single flush.

Spore print · Deep yellow to ochre

Golden Waxcap

Golden Waxcap

Gilled

A clean lemon to golden-yellow waxcap with a viscid smooth cap and a slightly greasy yellow stem, one of the commonest and brightest species in autumn turf.

Spore print · White

Golden Ear

Jellies

A deep golden-orange jelly fungus forming firm, ear- or petal-shaped lobes on hardwood, always accompanied by the hairy brackets of Stereum hirsutum, the host it parasitises.

Spore print · White

Golden Coral

Corals & Clubs

A large, richly golden branched coral rising from a short whitish trunk, fruiting from soil in broadleaf woodland. Branch and tip colour is nearly uniform, without pink or salmon tones.

Spore print · Pale ochre-yellow

Golden Chanterelle

Golden Chanterelle

Gilled

A golden-yellow funnel-shaped fungus with blunt forking ridges instead of true gills running down a solid tapering stem, and a distinctive apricot-like scent.

Spore print · Pale yellow to cream