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 Hare's Foot Inkcap (or similar Inkcap species)

Hare's Foot Inkcap

Gilled

A short-lived inkcap whose young cylindrical cap is wrapped in dense silvery-white wool like a hare's foot, then expands, splits, and curls back within hours. Common on woodchip and litter.

Spore print · Black

Goldenhaired Inkcap

Goldenhaired Inkcap

Gilled

A small ochre-brown inkcap whose young cap is speckled with golden-brown veil granules; the gills blacken and deliquesce as the fruit body ages.

Spore print · Black

Midden Inkcap

Gilled

A miniature counterpart of the Shaggy Inkcap that lives on manure heaps, with a white scaly cylindrical cap, a slender ringed stem and the same rapid melt into black ink.

Spore print · Black

Snowy Inkcap

Gilled

A small, brilliantly white inkcap coated in a floury veil, growing on cow and horse dung in pasture. Its pure white cap darkens and dissolves to black within a day.

Spore print · Black

Scaly Inkcap

Gilled

A clustered inkcap whose buff-brown bell-shaped cap is decorated with felty whitish veil patches. It fruits in tufts on hardwood stumps and buried wood.

Spore print · Black

Pleated Inkcap

Gilled

A tiny, exquisitely pleated grey mushroom that opens like a paper parasol on lawns after rain and collapses by the afternoon. Its gills attach to a collar rather than the stipe.

Spore print · Black

Firerug Inkcap

Gilled

An inkcap identified by the rusty-orange felted mycelial mat, the ozonium, that carpets the wood it grows from. The tawny cap is grooved and dusted with pale granular veil.

Spore print · Black

Magpie Inkcap

Magpie Inkcap

Gilled

A tall, dramatic inkcap whose blackish-brown cap is broken into a pied pattern by large white felty veil patches. It stands singly in deep beech litter on lime-rich soils and dissolves into black ink within a day.

Spore print · Black

Common Inkcap

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

Fairy Inkcap

Fairy Inkcap

Gilled

A tiny pleated inkcap that fruits in swarming troops of hundreds around hardwood stumps, its pale buff bonnet-shaped caps carried on thread-thin white stems.

Spore print · Blackish brown

Grey Shag

Gilled

A tall, fragile inkcap of manure and composted straw, its ovoid grey cap coated in loose woolly veil fibres before it splits, curls and melts away into black ink.

Spore print · Black

Parasola auricoma

Gilled

A delicate pleated inkcap of mulch and path edges whose young cap carries scattered stiff brown hairs, visible with a hand lens, that give the species its golden-haired name.

Spore print · Black

Mica Cap

Mica Cap

Gilled

A small tawny-honey inkcap with a deeply grooved cap sparkling with mica-like granules when fresh, fruiting in dense clusters at the base of hardwood stumps.

Spore print · Dark brown to blackish

Coprinellus radians

Gilled

A small tawny inkcap recognised less by the mushroom than by the conspicuous rusty-orange felted mat of mycelium, called an ozonium, that spreads across the wood beneath it.

Spore print · Blackish brown

Common Ink Cap

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

Shaggy Ink Cap

Gilled

A tall, white, cylindrical mushroom clothed in shaggy upturned scales, whose gills pass from white through pink to black before dissolving into inky liquid. The movable ring and black spore print are confirming features.

Spore print · Black

Greenfoot Fibrecap

Gilled

A dark, densely shaggy fibrecap whose stipe base is stained a vivid blue-green. A distinctive species of damp mossy conifer woodland and boggy ground.

Spore print · Dull brown

Yellowfoot Dapperling

Gilled

A slim woodland dapperling with a shaggy ochre-brown scaly cap and a stem sheathed below the ring in loose yellow woolly veil, brightest toward the base. Its large spindle-shaped spores give the species its name.

Spore print · White

Woolly Tooth

Toothed

A thin, leathery toothed fungus forming zoned cinnamon funnels that fuse into rosettes across mossy conifer floors. Its white spore print separates it from the similar brown-spored Hydnellum species.

Spore print · White

Hericium abietis

Toothed

The largest of the western toothed corals, forming cream-white branched masses on dead conifer wood. It is the conifer counterpart of the hardwood-loving Hericium species and can reach the size of a football or larger.

Spore print · White