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 “Rooting Shank”
Rooting Shank
Gilled
A tall, slender woodland mushroom with a wrinkled, greasy ochre cap, widely spaced white gills and a long tapering stem that continues underground as a deep root-like tail.
Spore print · White
Rooting Cauliflower
Other Fungi
A very large cream rosette of curled, ribbon-like lobes rising from a long tapering rooting base attached to conifer roots in western North America.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Velvet Shank
Gilled
A tufted orange-capped mushroom with a slimy cap and a distinctive dark, velvety stem base, fruiting on hardwood stumps in the coldest months. The contrast between the bright cap and near-black stem is the giveaway.
Spore print · White
Rooting Polypore
Polypores
A tall stalked polypore that appears to grow from bare ground, its blackish scurfy stem tapering into a long root-like extension that reaches buried hardwood below.
Spore print · White
Spindleshank
Gilled
Tough, clustered mushrooms at the foot of oaks, with rust-spotted gills and a distinctive grooved, spindle-shaped stem that tapers into a twisted root.
Spore print · White
Blushing Rosette
Polypores
An oddly shaped cream to pinkish-buff polypore forming rosettes or lopsided funnels on the ground above buried roots, staining reddish brown where handled and often weeping red droplets.
Spore print · White
Platterful Mushroom
Gilled
A broad grey-brown mushroom streaked with dark radial fibres, with unusually wide, well-spaced white gills and a stem base tied to conspicuous white cord-like rhizomorphs.
Spore print · White
Hebeloma radicosum
Gilled
A large ringed Hebeloma with a deeply rooting stipe that traces down to a buried mammal latrine, and a marzipan-like almond scent.
Spore print · Snuff-brown
Jelly Rot
Crusts
A soft, gelatinous crust that turns its upper edge outward into small white hairy shelves, with a shocking orange-pink wrinkled and ridged spore surface beneath. It sprawls in overlapping sheets across fallen logs in late autumn.
Spore print · White
Heterobasidion annosum
Polypores
A perennial, irregularly shelving polypore found at the root collar and stump surfaces of conifers, recognised by its rough red-brown to blackish upper crust, sharp white growing margin and cream pore surface.
Spore print · White
Enoki
Gilled
A cold-weather wood-rotter forming dense tufts of small, glossy tawny caps above dark velvety stems. Cultivated strains grown in darkness look completely different: long, pale, thread-thin stems with tiny white caps.
Spore print · White
Wet Rot Fungus
Crusts
A thin, closely attached crust that starts creamy white and matures to olive- or umber-brown, its surface roughened with small warts and lumps. It grows on persistently wet dead wood outdoors and on damp timber indoors.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Dry Rot Fungus
Crusts
A flat, spreading wood-decay fungus forming rusty-brown wrinkled sheets edged with a thick white cottony margin, best known from structural conifer timber in damp buildings. Its pale, cord-like strands can travel long distances across masonry.
Spore print · Rusty brown
Dark Honey Fungus
Gilled
A robust clustered honey fungus of conifer forests with a dark-scaly reddish-brown cap and a thick white ring edged with brown scales, spreading through the soil by black shoestring rhizomorphs.
Spore print · White
Honey Mushroom
Gilled
A clustered honey-coloured woodland fungus with a finely scaly cap, a thick woolly ring and black bootlace-like cords running under the bark of its host. It is one of the most important tree parasites in temperate forests.
Spore print · White to pale cream
Scaly Earthball
Puffballs
A tan to ochre earthball whose thin, finely scaly skin sits on an unusually long, furrowed rooting stalk. The interior ripens from white to a dusty blackish-brown spore mass.
Spore print · Blackish brown (spore mass)
Butter Bolete
Boletes
A solid golden-pored bolete of warm broadleaf woods, with a dry tan-brown cap, a yellow finely netted stipe and a tapering rooting base. Flesh pale yellow, blueing slowly and weakly.
Spore print · Olive-brown
Termite Mushroom
Gilled
A giant tropical agaric with a sharply umbonate pale cap and a long tapering root that runs down to the fungus comb of a termite colony.
Spore print · Pinkish cream
Garlic Parachute
Gilled
A slender beech-litter mushroom with a pale hygrophanous cap on a disproportionately long, velvety blackish rooting stem, and an unmistakable strong garlic smell.
Spore print · White
Yellow Stagshorn
Jellies
Bright orange-yellow antler-shaped branches with a tough, gelatinous, rubbery texture, rooting into buried conifer wood by a deep tapering base.
Spore print · White to pale yellow
Coker's Amanita
Gilled
A large, imposing white amanita whose cap is armoured with sharply pointed, downward-curving warts, and whose rooting bulb is ringed with rows of recurved scales.
Spore print · White
Pinecone Cap
Gilled
A slender spring mushroom arising from buried pine cones, with a small pale brown cap, whitish widely spaced gills, and a long tawny rooting stem.
Spore print · White
Smith's Amanita
Gilled
A white Pacific Northwest amanita with soft cottony veil patches, a fragile ragged ring, and a tapering, spindle-shaped rooting stem base rather than a sac.
Spore print · White
Slate Bolete
Boletes
A firm, slate-grey to grey-brown scaber stalk of poplars, with a long rooting stem, dark scabers, and cut flesh that reddens then turns blue-green at the base.
Spore print · Ochre-brown