-Hypholoma - tends to grow in clumps or huge flushes from logs or tree snags or occasionally buried roots; dark purple spores, gills are bright green under a blacklight
-Pholiota/Leucophoiliota - scalycaps. Tend to have a fluffy or scaley texture to the cap and perhaps stem. Pholiota has a brown spore print, Leucopholiota has white (get it… ‘leuco’ means white :D)
-Hebeloma - poison-pies. Honestly you’re not going to be able to ID most of these so there’s no real point in trying. These guys are mychorrizal, are large but generally kind of boring, and have a brownish-pink to brown spore print, may have an ephemeral veil, and might smell like radishes. Seriously if you think you found one of these just dry it and send it somewhere for DNA sequencing because you’re not getting it to species otherwise
-Tricholoma - Knights. This is where the famous Matsutake mushroom lives. Big fleshy mychorrizal mushrooms with a white spore print and attached or notched gills. Some species are IDable (like the above mentioned matsutake,) many more are not. May or may not have a partial veil. I don’t find these to be that common and rarely see them, but I’m probably looking in the wrong places
-Fistulina - Beefsteak fungus. Looks like a giant tongue or a piece of liver sticking out of a tree, looks like a piece of sliced steak when you cut it in half. Supposedly tastes citrusy and is quite sought after as an edible, but my luck is bad and I’ve never gotten to taste one myself.
-Marasmius - Tiny little bois that tend to grow on leaf duff or out of moss or bark. Usually have a white cap with distinct ridge and gills spaced far apart - it kind of looks like an angelfood cake pan turned upside down, but really tiny. Probably has a wirey stem, usually quite gregarious.
Also because i’m feeling REAL sassy tonight, lets break down Amanita sections. What’s a section? Its the level between Genus and Species that makes it a little easier to discuss similar features between groups in a genus even if you can’t get it specifically down to species. This is great for getting a little more granular than genus when you’re not sure on the species.
Caveat: I’m actually pretty bad at amanitas but someone was kind enough to send me a copy of Amanitas of North America by Bunyard & Justice so I’m going to just distill their explanation of the sections in extremely unscientific terms
There are a few structures that are important to understanding amanita - a lot of these structures are in other species, especially closely related species, but I’m going to point them out here pendantically anyway because you should know them.
Gills/Lamellae - these are the fertile surface of amanita (and many agaric mushrooms.) They hang down, they look like ribs, and across the board they are free in amanita mushrooms - IE they are not attached to the stem and hang free of it. Incidentally, they always have a white spore print but may have other colors of gills
partial veil - the gill edges start fused to this structure and separate as the cap opens. If you find a young enough specimen, this still may be fused to the gills. In some sections, the partial veil remains fused to the stem leaving no ring/annulus
Universal veil/Volva - This is the egglike sac that all amanita grow out of. Again, not unique to this genus (see also: Volvopluteus/volariella and stinkhorn mushrooms) This ends up breaking up and looking different in a mature mushroom and is very important to IDing Amanita, which is a huge reason why you need to excavate the entire mushroom for good ID
So, now on to the sections
Sect. Phalloideae - this section contains some of the deadliest mushrooms on the planet. Here lives amatoxins, phallotoxins, lots of toxins. A. virosa, A. bisporigera, A. Phalloides, and many more famous and deadly mushrooms live here. Don’t eat these, your liver will melt and you will die a painful death
At maturity, these will retain a saccate volva (looks like a sac at the bottom of the mushroom), may have a single patch of remnant universal (velar) material left on the top - but not little dots. Have a skirt like annulus/partial veil (but don’t rely on it for ID because it may wear off.) Usually pretty easy to ID to section, often white or yellowish or greenish and very pretty.
Sect. Validae - volva remains marginate (IE, it has an edge,) but doesn’t fully have a sack. Will have small veil remnants on cap. Has an annulus on the stem.
Sect. Lepidella - Retains a partial veil/annulas. Volva breaks apart leaving dotted remnants on both cap and stem, without a saccate volva
Sect. Amidella - this is a small section that I’m kind of the worst at. Usually doesn’t have an annulus (there’s a couple species that do,) and retains a thick, saccate remnant volva that is quite large.
Sect Amanita - This is where Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric, lives. Its actually the type species of the section. often have brightly colored caps dotted with universal veil remnants and tattered veil remnants on a bulbous base. If its looks like the Mario mushroom, it probably lives here.
Sect. Caesaereae - Amanita ceasaerea is the type species for this section and is a prized edible (don’t eat these unless you’re good at amanita IDs though, PLEASE.) Sometimes have more brightly colored gills and stipe than most other amanita species, may develop a chevron pattern on the stipe, has a striate margin (there’s distinct, longitudinal lines on the cap) a saccate volva, and a partial veil.
Sect. Vaginatae - this is Caesaereae’s sister section. Retains most of the same characteristics, although they are generally not quite as bright and lack a partial veil remnant. So, they won’t have a skirt.
EDIT: I forgot there’s some more sections of amanita that I forgot about. Also Lepidella has apparently been mainly absorbed into other sections - I’ll need to update this a bit later XD
Looks like this thread is going to be my morning coffee reading for some time . Yesterday wading through my daily stack of Unknowns, I did try putting some of the definitions into practice… such a feeling of empowerment and it’s only the beginning ! It’s going to take a lot of studying to feel even slightly in control, but I’m on it. And it is such fun @ lothlin can you put my name down for one of the first (signed) copies of your book when it comes out (I’m not joking, I’ve never have imagined anyone could make learning mycology such downright fun).
I’m flattered but its going to be a long time before I feel like I’m actually experienced enough to really write a book. I’m far from an expert, just a huge nerd XD
That would be such fun… pity you’re half a world away . But seriously, you have such a fantastic way of communicating, it’s a rare gift. Don’t wait too long for the book… the years fly by.
It’s powerful to simply iterate back and forth between other people’s observations in your area (using explore mode) and going out to the field with your brain primed to see the common local & seasonal species.
Keep in mind that mushrooms are often briefly locally abundant. If there’s someone else whose observations keep showing up near you follow them and your feed will keep priming you for what you are likely to see. The more of the “expected” species you can identify at a glance, the easier it will be to see it if you stumble across something unexpected.
Ditto, I’ve been hoping to come across something like this for ages and would love to see it turned into a series of journal posts or something! Basic casual descriptions like this (and maybe a handful of photos) are soo helpful for getting introduced to large complex taxa. Thanks @lothlin for writing these out!
The National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Mushrooms written by (the late) Gary Lincoff has thoughtful guidance for beginners and loads of information for more experienced mushroom hunters. Nowadays when I’m on an outing it’s been displaced in my pocket by my cellphone but I still consult the Field Guide among other sources when I get back home for IDing. One of its handy features is that the pictures (and they are many) are organized by similarity of shape and appearance making it easier to find and compare lookalikes.
I’m happy to suggest some books too, and several of the books that I have are organized by macroscopic characteristics and not families (the more technical books that contain detailed keys tend to be more family-organized.) But I just didn’t list them all since mushroom books can be pretty regional and OP was asking for online sources.
For the east, a great one that’s set up like this is Mushrooms of the Northeast (Walt Sturgeon is one of the authors)
Hi! I am new here. My first post. This is exactly why I joined. I went through a fungi forest of thousands of mushroom last week. I took over 400 pictures! Four for sure are in the top 10 most poisonous. Dozens of different kinds! I would love to identify. Thank you
Your fungi adventure sounds like it was amazing :). I see you are just getting started so be sure to post your observations to the INaturalist app. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=suziequzi . Once you’ve uploaded some observations, people will help ID those fungi and scientists have access to the data for their research projects.
Hi thank you! I do have lots of questions.
I am not very tech savvy. For one about the link you posted.
Is that how I post? Do I have my own page? Does it go somewhere else so I can get help? I have many great mushroom photo’s and lots from my last trip. I need help identifying. I did a lot of reading and if I get to level 2 I will be surprised! I found a few yellow ones with white spiky spots popping out of an old fir.
I didn’t post a link - do you mean the one teelbee posted? She posted two links, one to your own observations: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=suziequzi There are no observations shown there because you haven’t uploaded any of your photos to iNaturalist. Here’s the link to my observations, just to give you an idea of what will show up once you start uploading to iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=lynnharper Feel free to click around anywhere on this page; you can’t break anything.
The other link is to information of how to get started using iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started Maybe reading those that information will help. One of the very basic things you may not know is that iNaturalist is not only an app, but also a very active website. If you are using the Seek app, that is essentially a simplified version of iNaturalist that can (usually) give you a quick answer to the question “What is it?” In Seek, you can choose to then upload your photos to iNaturalist.
I hope this helps! There’s a big learning curve to using iNaturalist, but it’s great fun once you get the hang of it.
Thank you!!! This helps a lot!!! I have not downloaded any apps of any kind ever, so I do need help. I am a lap top user. My phone is the size of a credit card. I use a Nikon 950 to take pictures. I will poke around, thank you for helping me :-)))
. Yesterday wading through my daily stack of Unknowns, I did try putting some of the definitions into practice… such a feeling of empowerment and it’s only the beginning 
! It’s going to take a lot of studying to feel even slightly in control, but I’m on it. And it is such fun @ 
. But seriously, you have such a fantastic way of communicating, it’s a rare gift. Don’t wait too long for the book… the years fly by.