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 Pinwheel Mushroom (likely a species of Marasmiellus or similar genus)

Orange Pinwheel

Orange Pinwheel

Gilled

A vivid rusty-orange miniature with a pleated, umbrella-like cap held on a wiry blackish thread of a stem, scattered through damp hardwood litter.

Spore print · White

Macro Mushroom

Macro Mushroom

Gilled

One of the largest white meadow Agaricus species, with a thick cracking cap that can exceed 25 cm and an unusually massive, felty ring. A grassland decomposer of long-established, lightly managed pasture.

Spore print · Dark chocolate brown

Hedgehog Mushroom

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

Cauliflower Mushroom

Cauliflower Mushroom

Corals & Clubs

A large cream-coloured rosette of flattened, crimped, ribbon-like lobes that grows at the base of conifers, resembling a cauliflower head or a bath sponge.

Spore print · White to pale cream

American Caesar's Mushroom

American Caesar's Mushroom

Gilled

A brilliant red-to-orange Amanita of eastern North American oak and pine woods, with yellow gills, a yellow-orange skirt ring and a thick white sac at the base.

Spore print · White

Amethyst Deceiver

Amethyst Deceiver

Gilled

A small woodland mushroom that is intensely violet when fresh and moist, with thick, widely spaced gills of the same colour and a fibrous, twisted stem. It fades so dramatically as it dries that it can look like a completely different species.

Spore print · White

Yellow Stainer

Yellow Stainer

Gilled

A white Agaricus that flushes instant bright chrome-yellow when the cap margin is rubbed or the stem base is cut, and carries a distinctive ink-like odour. Young caps often have a flat-topped, squared-off profile.

Spore print · Dark chocolate-brown

Coprinellus radians

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

Veiled Oyster

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

Parrot Waxcap

Parrot Waxcap

Gilled

A small, wholly glutinous waxcap that emerges bottle-green and then fades through yellow, orange and pink, usually keeping a green flush at the top of the slimy stem.

Spore print · White

Redlead Roundhead

Redlead Roundhead

Gilled

An unmistakable scarlet to orange-red mushroom of woodchip mulch, with a sticky cap, whitish fibrillose stem and dark purple-brown gills.

Spore print · Purple-brown

Lion's Mane

Lion's Mane

Toothed

An unmistakable white cushion of long, downward-hanging spines that grows from wounds on standing hardwoods, looking like a frozen waterfall or a shaggy mane.

Spore print · White

Jack-o'-Lantern

Jack-o'-Lantern

Gilled

A vivid orange clustering mushroom of hardwood stumps with true, sharp-edged, deeply decurrent gills that can glow faintly green in darkness, and a pale spore print.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellowish white

Birch Brittlegill

Birch Brittlegill

Gilled

A small, delicate brittlegill with a pale rosy or almost white cap, found only with birch on wet acid ground. Its thin flesh and grooved margin make it one of the frailest of the genus.

Spore print · White

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

Blushing Morel

Blushing Morel

Morels & Allies

A pale, greyish to yellow-brown morel of mulch and disturbed ground whose ridges and stalk stain pinkish, rusty or ochre-brown where handled or with age. It is one of the earliest-branching lineages in the genus.

Spore print · Cream to pale yellow

Flat-topped Coral

Flat-topped Coral

Corals & Clubs

A stout orange-ochre club with a broad, flat, wrinkled top that looks as if it has been sliced off. A conifer-forest species of western and northern regions.

Spore print · White to pale yellow

Hericium abietis

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

Northern Milkcap

Northern Milkcap

Gilled

A large, greasy grey-violet milkcap of northern birch and spruce forests, with white latex that dries greyish or greenish on the pale gills. It is one of the most abundant Lactarius species in Fennoscandia and the boreal belt.

Spore print · Pale cream to pale yellow

Fuzzy Foot

Fuzzy Foot

Gilled

A tiny orange-brown bell-shaped mushroom that erupts in enormous swarms across mossy conifer logs, recognised by decurrent veined gills and a tuft of tawny fuzz at the stipe base.

Spore print · White