Sulphur Tuft Mushroom (Hypholoma fasciculare): How to ID

Sulphur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare) is a poisonous mushroom, not an edible one. Wild Food UK lists it as poisonous and says it should not be eaten, and Wikipedia records symptoms starting 5 to 10 hours after eating: diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, protein in the urine and collapse, with paralysis and impaired vision also documented. One death with severe liver damage has been reported, although that person had eaten more than one kind of mushroom.

If anyone may have eaten it, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 (U.S.) now, before symptoms start. Keep a piece of the mushroom in a paper bag.

• Growth habit. Large, tight clumps on stumps, fallen logs and buried wood. Wikipedia notes it is more common on broadleaf wood than on conifer wood. Wild Food UK adds that stems are often curved because the clumps grow sideways out of stumps.
• Cap. 2 to 8 cm across, smooth, sulphur yellow with an orange-brown centre and a paler edge; Wild Food UK notes veil remnants sometimes hang from the rim.
• Gills. The key feature. They start sulphur yellow, then turn olive-green, and darken as the purple-brown spores mature.
• Stem. 3 to 12 cm tall and thin, yellow above and orange-brown towards the base, often with a faint dark ring zone rather than a proper ring.
• Spore print. Purple-brown.
• Season. Wikipedia gives spring to autumn; Wild Food UK records it in every season in Britain.

Both grow in clumps on wood in autumn and both are yellowish, which is why the pair gets confused. Four checks separate them.

• Spore print. Sulphur tuft prints purple-brown. Honey fungus (Armillaria mellea) prints white. This is the most reliable single check.
• Gill colour. Sulphur tuft gills go greenish. Honey fungus gills stay whitish to cream.
• Ring. Honey fungus has a broad, persistent, skin-like ring high on the stem (Wikipedia). Sulphur tuft has at most a faint dark zone.
• Black bootlaces. Honey fungus spreads by black, bootlace-like strands (rhizomorphs) under bark and in soil; Wikipedia calls these more reliable indicators of Armillaria than the mushrooms themselves.

Honey fungus is also a tree problem in its own right: see clusters of mushrooms in yard. And both can be mixed up with the deadly funeral bell, a small brown wood-rotter with a rusty-brown spore print.

• Conifer tuft (Hypholoma capnoides). A close relative on conifer wood. Wikipedia says it lacks the greenish gills and the bitter taste of sulphur tuft. Because the separation depends on gill colour, it is not a beginner's mushroom.
• Brick cap (Hypholoma sublateritium). Wikipedia separates it by its reddish cap.
• Chanterelles. Wild Food UK reports beginners mistaking sulphur tuft for chanterelles because of the yellow colour. Holden Forests & Gardens describes chanterelles as having fold-like ridges rather than true gills, and Wild Food UK notes the dirty olive gills of sulphur tuft are absent from chanterelles.

A general rule from Poison Control applies here: look-alike mushrooms can fool you, and only an expert should confirm a wild mushroom before anyone eats it.

Sulphur tuft is a wood-decay fungus. Wikipedia describes it growing on dead wood, and it is widely recorded, with 65,017 iNaturalist observations as of 2026-09-25. In a garden it usually means an old stump, buried roots or woodchip mulch is breaking down.

It does not need treatment. If small children or dogs use the area, knock the clumps off and put them in the bin, and remember that new ones will come back while the wood lasts. If you see honey-coloured clumps with white spore prints and black bootlaces at the base of a living tree instead, that is a different fungus that can kill trees; ask an arborist.

Research and drafting for this page were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed below. Nothing on this page says a wild mushroom is safe to eat. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.