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Northern Hemisphere Mushrooms

Northern Hemisphere mushrooms on KnowTheSpore, with edibility ratings, identification tips, and safety notes.

Smooth tan birch polypore bracket with a white pore surface attached to a birch trunk

Birch Polypore

Fomitopsis betulina

Birch polypore is a smooth pale bracket found almost exclusively on birch. The birch host and unzoned…

Inedible
Large black cracked chaga conk on the trunk of a living white birch

Chaga

Inonotus obliquus

Chaga is the black cracked mass on a living birch, and it is not a mushroom in the way most people mean. It…

Medicinal
A large bracket of chicken of the woods in overlapping shelves on an oak trunk, sulphur yellow margins grading to bright orange

Chicken of the Woods

Laetiporus sulphureus

Chicken of the woods is one of the easiest wild mushrooms to recognize and one of the easier ones to get…

Caution
A large hen of the woods rosette at the base of an oak trunk, overlapping gray-brown fronds with pale wavy margins

Maitake

Grifola frondosa

Maitake is the one common wild edible you can own as a place rather than find as an event. It returns to the…

Choice
A cluster of turkey tail bracket fungi on a mossy log, thin overlapping fans banded in brown, rust, tan and gray

Turkey Tail

Trametes versicolor

Turkey tail is the most photographed mushroom in the woods and one of the most often misnamed, because the…

Medicinal
Whole poria sclerotium cut open to show its thin brown rind and dense white interior

Poria

Wolfiporia cocos

Poria is unusual because the traded material is a buried storage structure called a sclerotium, not the…

Medicinal
Red-belted conk bracket on a fallen conifer

Red-Belted Conk

Fomitopsis pinicola

Red-belted conk is a hard perennial bracket with a dark varnished crust, a red-orange band, a pale growing…

Inedible

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