any good online id keys?

[tom00_uk]

title says it all

instead of using people on heres knowledge i would like to give id'ing the fungi i see as i go about my day and then check my thoughts with people of a higher level of knowledge

[TeresaW]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'people with a higher level of knowledge' but there are some absolute experts on here whose knowledge would be hard to better IMO.

But if you take a look at the Fungi Identifier on the left here, it will give a few pointers, then you can search the library pictures for similar species. The variety of uploaded user photo's here helps a lot.

There is also a great deal of help in the other sections on the left too, including the glossary, the A-Z and so on.

[tom00_uk]

higher level of knowledge than my own, i can id a few but am still very poor so wanted to teach myself the same way i learned aquatic invert, plants etc id skills through using keys etc

[tom00_uk]

i ask as i come across a lot of different fungi every day
today there were masses of what i think are Apricot Club
Clavulinopsis luteoalba as well as coral

since i am not sure what im looking at some times i all ways make sure to take a snap and leave them as i find them,

the picture list on here is nice but its not a very fast way of id'ing, i could post pics on here but then im not developing my own skills

[thebeard]

there's quite a few on mushroomexpert.com just on the drop down menu on the homepage

hope this helps
tom

[Morchella]

I quite like this one MycoKey fungus identifier but sometimes throws up more options than I can cope with. Also worthwhile looking at the visual key on the Roger Phillips site to try and get down to genus than go from there.

Still waiting for Mycokey for iphone

Laura

[SheffieldLass]

I put together a lot of links to fungi websites which if you search really hard on WAB you will find. So that you don't spend hours searching for the place it is hidden, here is the link to the page on WAB. It took me a few minutes to find it and that was with knowing where to look too . (To navigate to it you have to click on Fungi Reference in the fungi menu to the left, then get out your magnifying glass to find where the link is on that page):

Useful Fungi Websites | Wild About Britain

There are many very good keys available online ...

Melanie

[TeresaW]

I'm in the same position as you, I'm just learning about the different pointers that lead to identification. I know now that some will never the fully identified by look alone, and microscopy is needed to examine the spores.

But over time, I am beginning to recognise a few species quite easily, that I would not have known a year ago. This is all down to the help I've had on here, and from books.

Carrying a good field guide with you when out and about, or at the very least, photographing a fungus from various angles and attempting to ID them at home from a good book works well, then getting some confirmation where possible on here. Taking a spore print is easy, and spore colour is another good key to ID of many species.

But for me, any Mycena species, or LBJ's (little brown jobs) are consigned to just being named, 'one of the bonnets' in general. I don't want to go into the science of fungi, I just want to be able to identify as many as possible.

But the more you do it, the better you'll become, as it is with anything. Practise makes perfect.