Welcome to Mushroom World

Welcome to Mushroom World, your resource for mushroom information. This site contains information and images of mushrooms found mainly in Europe. You can use this information to identify fungus, but if you intend to eat the mushrooms you identify, never rely on one source for mushroom identification, and never eat any wild mushroom until an expert mycologist has checked your identification.

Mushroom World is not intended to be an identification guide for edible mushrooms. You should learn to collect fungi for the table with the help of experienced collectors and a good field guide. Please read the Guide To Picking Mushrooms and the disclaimer.

There are thousands of different mushroom species, so we have tried to limit those we list to the most common ones. New species are also continuously added to the site.

Browse the database

You can browse the database from the alphabetical list or by going directly to the mushroom records which are listed under the categories poisonous, inedible and edible. You can also search the database based on mushroom name or some property.

Knowing poisonous mushrooms is always important; especially if you pick mushrooms, so take some time to study the poisonous mushrooms.

Help identifying a mushroom

If you know the characteristics of a mushroom, but need help to identify it, try our Mushroom identification helper. You can browse mushroom pictures there and perhaps find a match.

If this site cannot help you, we recommend mushroomobserver.org, which is a community site for mushroom identifications. There are also many Facebook groups for mushroom identifications like the Mushroom Identification - public group.

Identification Quiz

We have also created a quiz where you can test how good you are at identifying fungi. You can repeat the quiz as many times as you want, each time with new questions.

Today's Mushroom

Today's mushroom is Lactarius rufus (Red-hot Lactarius). The mushroom is Inedible. It grows in North America, Europe.

Description: Lactarius rufus, also know as Red-hot Lactarius, is a small to medium-sized agaric that has a dull reddish-brown cap, creamy white gills and exudes milk that remains white. The flesh tastes very hot after about 30 seconds but can be eaten only after being salted and then pickled.

Cap dry and velvety with a powdery matte texture and never sticky. It is reddish or bay-brown coloured, at first convex with an inrolled margin, later flattened or slightly depressed typically with a small central umbo, Gills first creamy white, later more similarly coloured as the cap, sub-decurrent, which means they travel partially down the stem and are fairly crowded. Spores are off white. Stem is similarly coloured as the cap or more pallid, smooth and tapers off and darkens toward the base. The mushroom has no ring.

Similar species Lactarus hepaticus exudes white milk that stains yellow as it dries.

Lactarius rufus on the www.first-nature.com web site.

Dimensions: Cap 3-10 cm diameter, stem 4-8 cm tall * 0.5-2 cm thick

If you are interested in this mushroom, look it up in our database. You can find more detailed pictures there.