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 “Pleated Inky Cap”
Inky Mushroom
Gilled
A grey-scaled woodland Agaricus with a dark-centred cap, a chrome-yellow staining stipe base and a distinctly inky odour.
Spore print · Dark chocolate 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
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
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
Fragile Dapperling
Gilled
Perhaps the most insubstantial gilled mushroom in the field guide: a wafer-thin, deeply pleated yellowish-green cap stretched over its gills like a parasol skin, on a stem no thicker than a wire. It collapses to a smear within hours of opening.
Spore print · White
Shaggy Mane
Gilled
A tall white cylindrical mushroom covered in shaggy upturned scales, whose gills blacken and dissolve into an inky liquid from the cap margin upward as it matures.
Spore print · Black
Blackening Waxcap
Gilled
A sharply conical orange to scarlet waxcap that turns inky black wherever it is bruised or as it ages, ending as a wholly charred-looking fruit body.
Spore print · White
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
Mauve Parachute
Gilled
A jewel-like tropical parachute with a deeply pleated purple-red cap, pale distant gills and a shining black hair of a stem, scattered on fallen twigs and leaves.
Spore print · White
Flat-topped Agaricus
Gilled
A North American woodland Agaricus with a characteristically flat-topped, grey-scaled cap, a bulbous stipe base that flushes chrome-yellow and a sharp inky odour.
Spore print · Dark chocolate brown
Black-footed Polypore
Polypores
A stalked polypore with a polished chestnut-brown, funnel-shaped cap and minute white pores, recognised instantly by the inky black lower half of its stem.
Spore print · White
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
Flowerpot Parasol
Gilled
A slender, brilliant sulphur-yellow mushroom that appears overnight in the pots of houseplants and in greenhouse beds, with a powdery pleated cap and a fragile ringed stem. It collapses within a day, often before anyone notices it opened.
Spore print · White
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
Scarletina Bolete
Boletes
A stout, dark-capped bolete with blood-red pores and a yellow stipe peppered with fine red dots, whose lemon flesh turns instantly inky blue when cut.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Onion-stalk Parasol
Gilled
A soft white parasol with a mealy, pleated cap and a stem that swells into an onion-shaped bulb before tapering to a point. It fruits in crowded clusters on wood chips, mulch and compost, often dozens at a time.
Spore print · White
Plantpot Dapperling
Gilled
A vivid lemon-yellow little parasol that appears overnight in the compost of houseplants and greenhouse pots. Its powdery cap opens into a deeply pleated disc on a slender yellow stem and collapses within a day.
Spore print · White
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
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
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
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
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