Mushroom Identification Pictures and Examples

Gills – What sort of spore-producing structures do you see? How are they attached? Be it gills, pores, or teeth, this is important to know.

Stalk description – Make note of the size, shape, color, and whether or not it is hollow.

Spore color – Another extremely important mushroom identification characteristic. You will have to make a spore print to know this.

Bruising when touched – Does it change color or bleed any liquid when it’s sliced in half or grasped firmly?

Habitat – Anything about the surrounding area. This includes trees, temperature, soil, etc.

Time of year – Certain mushrooms fruit during certain times of the year.

Cap description – Like the stalk, note all physical characteristics of the cap.

Smell and taste – Don’t leave out these sensations. Smell and taste may tell you something too. (If tasting, only try the tiniest amount!)

Old Man of the Woods (Strobilomyces floccopus)

No, it’s not that weird guy who lives in the forest behind your local bike path. This is a good beginner mushroom.

• Gills: None. A spongy layer of pores was on the underside of the cap instead.
• Cap/stem: Distinct from each other, with white and gray coloring. The cap is convex, with a layer of woolly scales on the top.
• Spore color: Unknown
• Bruising: Reddish at first, then slowly turning to black.
• Habitat: I picked this just off a trail in a mixed hardwood forest. It was growing alone on the ground, not on a tree.
• Time of year: Late August
• Smell/taste: Unknown

Easy to identify due to its unique cap and the presence of pores, this is a great example of a bolete. Boletes are defined as having a separate cap and stem with a spongy surface of pores. To be sure, I checked for the appropriate colors after bruising. Old man of the woods foraging information.

Chanterelle (Cantharellus sp.)

It’s definitely worth knowing how to identify the delicious chanterelle. See this page on chanterelle mushroom identification for a more in-depth article.

• Gills: None. Instead, there were wrinkled folds known as “false gills”. This is very important to look for with chanterelle identification. The pic to the right is a good example.
• Cap/stem: The caps were slightly vase-shaped. The stems had no bulb or ring and were not hollow. Both were an orange-yellow color.
• Spore color: Unknown
• Bruising: Unkown
• Habitat: On the ground at the edge of a trail in a mixed hardwood forest. I found more than one, but they did not grow in clusters.
• Time of year: August
• Smell/taste: They smelled slightly fruity/flowery.

The false gills, and the fact that they weren’t growing in clusters, led me to believe these were chanterelles and not poisonous jack o’lanterns. I did eat these, and they tasted great!

Northern Tooth (Climacodon septentrionale)

This was a fun surprise. When I saw it from the road it looked like an oyster mushroom. A closer examination revealed something else!

• Gills: None. Instead, there were small “teeth”, or spines, hanging from the underside of the cap. This made identification fairly easy.
• Cap/stem: No stem. The caps were a series of overlapping, shelf-like fruiting bodies. They were whitish and very tough.
• Spore color: Unknown
• Bruising: Unknown
• Habitat: Found growing on a dying maple tree.
• Time of year: September
• Smell/taste: Unknown

There aren’t as many mushrooms with teeth as there are with gills, and fewer still that grow on trees. The other clue here is habitat, as I found it growing on a dying maple. The northern tooth is a parasite that rots the heartwood of maple trees.

Below is a close-up of the tiny teeth.

Russula (Russula sp.)

• Gills: Gills were white and attached to the stem.
• Cap/stem: Cap was red on top and slightly upturned. The stem was white with no ring.
• Spore color: Spore print was whitish.
• Bruising: Unknown
• Habitat: Found growing on the ground among leaf litter in a mixed hardwood forest.
• Time of year: September
• Smell/taste: Smelled fruity but the taste was very bitter.

The spore print, white gills, and red/white color combination indicates a mushroom in the Russula genus. Yet which one? Russula mushroom identification is very difficult, with microscopic information sometimes needed. I decided on one of the more common species that fit the description, Russula emetica.

Honey Fungus (probably Armillaria mellea)

My apologies for the washed out picture.

• Gills: Brownish and attached to the stem.
• Cap/stem: The caps were slightly convex with a lightish brown color. The stems had a ring around them and were brown-white.
• Spore color: White
• Bruising: Unknown
• Habitat: Growing in a thick cluster on the roots of an overturned oak tree.
• Time of year: July
• Smell/taste: Unknown

Although these mushrooms matched all the characteristics of a honey fungus, I still took a spore print. A white spore print is an essential part of honey fungus identification.