This is the framework I'm using for talking and thinking about fungi, for identifying fungi, and for suggesting common names. Hopefully, others will find this arrangement (or the idea behind it) useful as well.

All common names that have scientific counterparts, including all species-level names, which should be embedded in this framework, are listed alphabetically here.

Whenever we interact with fungi, we naturally find it useful to describe them from a "folk" perspective—to refer to groupings based on features. We do this as we're spotting mushrooms, as we're identifying them, as we're organizing forays and foray tables and books and chapters about them, reporting on them in scientific papers, mentioning them on social media, on menus. Inevitably, folk taxa are what we use to communicate their impressive diversity: phenotypes can easily make an impression, while genotypes can't.

To the extent that it proves reliable and persistent, a folk taxon can say something about organisms that phylogeny doesn't capture. A good folk taxon indicates a collection of traits that might cross phylogenetic lines. It raises questions that might conceivably be interesting for science—why do agarics appear throughout the phylogeny? Why are there so many more species of porecrusts than toothcrusts? Why is there a reliable boundary between cupoids and stereoids (names adopted here) but not between "cups" and "discs" (not adopted here)?

The folk taxonomy on this page is mostly informed by field features of mushrooms—the features that can be observed with naked human senses. That is a bias, and it is certainly supported by my own recreational interest in field ID. But some of that bias might be justified. It would seem that for most people, for most fungal species, the most common context for wanting to call it by name would be (something like) encountering it growing in the wild. The prime context for bird common-naming seems to be birdwatching, and we seem poised to view mushrooms similarly. So, microscopic and chemical features, while not necessarily ignored, take a back seat. I am assiduously considering the phylogeny, and using it as a default, or baseline, for each group, but not as a mandate. The phylogeny is overriden when convenient, intuitive relationships cross its lines.

Scientific names are crucial for obvious reasons. Common names aren't meant to replace them, but to exist in parallel, with each system excelling in places where the other struggles.

In scientific taxonomy—phylogenetic taxonomy—the arrangement of organisms into taxa is mostly objective. Its objectivity comes from the fact that there is one true evolutionary history that resulted in all life we see. We model the history as a phylogenetic tree, each living organism (or species) as a leaf; its ancestors, originating from the trunk, lining the branches and then twigs to reach and birth it. Phylogenetic taxonomy requires leaves to be grouped by their branches—that is, a set of organisms can only be named if they "fill a branch" and represent all the descendants of an ancestor species. This condition is monophyly.

Shared branches are an elegant and (theoretically) straightforward way to group leaves. But we, as leaf enthusiasts, may be interested in grouping leaves in other ways—by what the leaves are actually like. There might be a number of distinct kinds of leaves on the tree, kinds that are mixed around different branches. In other words, we might be interested in distinct kinds of organisms that are mixed around different evolutionary branches. This is where common (folk) taxonomy comes in.

In folk taxonomy, the arrangement of organisms is, or would seem, far more subjective. Organisms are grouped according to whatever similarities are most important and convenient for the people and purpose(s) at hand. It is of course impossible to optimize names for everyone and every situation with a single set of names. But something similar just happens: within a community, over time, a workable consensus will emerge: this is natural language, evolving ungoverned, the process that gave us words like "fish" and "worm" and "tree" without knowing their evolutionary history.

The premise behind this page (and any other work where words are defined or proposed) is that natural language can be helped along. The English language is evolving naturally, but our understanding of fungi is accelerating much faster. The premise here is that by combining

• our new understanding of fungi, their features and relationships, and
• careful attention to already-successful common names

we can select and suggest names that

• may become naturally widely adopted
• but, regardless, will communicate some of that new understanding.

The flow of new scientific names is voluminous and energetic. There is a parallel pipe, trickling, for common names. Here, suggesting specific common names is not meant to regulate them, to force or pressure their adoption, or to replace the other pipe, but to prime their own existing pump.

A species group (synonymously, a "species complex") is a set of species that are difficult to distinguish, closely related, and treated as a unit just above species rank, named after one of the constituent species. They are written as, for example, "Cantharellus lateritius group". These names are ubiquitous, but the concept suffers from some ambiguities. Of course there are superficial ambiguities in defining it (how difficult to distinguish, how closely related, how close to species rank?), but these are, or can be, settled easily enough by precedent and habit. The deeper and more difficult ambiguity is about what kind of names they are. They aren't really scientific names—the ICN stipulates the format of a rank between genus and species (Art. 21), and species groups, written as such, cannot fit. They aren't really common names either, because they include strict, italicized, scientific names, with no room for anglicization or natural, vernacular changes.

So, species groups are, at heart, a fudge between scientific names and common names. Here, I treat them as scientific names, because most people do, and because they can have common names themselves (Cantharellus lateritius group = "smooth chanterelle"). But ideally, in the future, we won't have to rely on this fudge, we'll move away from using species groups entirely—and instead use actual scientific names (e.g., validly published stirpes) for situations that demand rigor, and actual common names for situations that demand convenience.

A grouping, as used here, is simply a common-name taxon that includes multiple common-name taxa below it. All names displayed directly in the table below are groupings. Most groupings are above species rank and do not correspond directly to a scientific name (e.g., "polypores"). But this is not a requirement: "orangegill waxcap", for example, corresponds to the scientific species name Humidicutis marginata, and is a grouping that includes multiple variety-level common-name taxa (e.g., "olive orangegill" = Humidicutis marginata var. olivacea).

The goal is obviously to list stable, long-lasting names. Big changes are uncommon. However, this page is, inherently, permanently in progress. All categories are subject to being renamed, reorganized, etc., at any time.

Immediate goals:

• improve interface for mobile screens
• add hover-definitions for all names
• add etymologies for unfamiliar/non-obvious names
• indicate intermediate/overlapping forms
• add a counterpart page with names organized under scientific taxa