Welcome to Mushroom World
Welcome to Mushroom World, your resource for mushroom information. On this site you can search for mushrooms in our database and read about them. You can use this information to identify fungus, but do not eat mushrooms you are not 100% certain of. Use many resources, and be skeptical of your own conclusions. It takes normally years of experience to be able to identify mushrooms reliably. The responsibility for the identification is yours; the site takes no responsibility for damage caused by wrong identifications. Please read the disclaimer.
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.
Help identifying a mushroom
If you know how a mushroom looks, 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.
Today's Mushroom
Todays mushroom is Laetiporus sulphureus (Chicken of the Woods). The mushroom is Edible. It grows in Europe and North America.
Description: The fruit bodies of this mushroom grow as striking golden-yellow shelf-like structures on tree trunks and branches. The undersurface of the fruit body is made up of tubelike pores rather than gills.
Fruiting body attached directly to the trunk of a tree and is initially knob-shaped, later expands to fan-shaped, typically overlapping shelves with thick margin. The upper surface color ranges from bright whitish-yellow to bright whitish-orange. Flesh soft and coloured as cap surface. Old fruitbodies fade to tan or whitish. The under surface is sulphur-yellow with small pores or tubes and has a white spore print. When fresh, the flesh is succulent and exudes a yellowish juice, but soon becomes dry and brittle. It has a strong, fungusy smell.
Laetiporus sulphureus on the MushroomExpert.Com Web site.
Dimensions: Cap 5 to 60 cm in diameter and 4 cm thick
If you are interested in this mushroom, look it up in our database. You can find more detailed pictures there.
