A List of 10 Gay Mushrooms

Mushrooms are gay, right? I feel like this is a widely acknowledged truth, but has been sorely lacking documented evidence, until now! 

We’re getting to that time of year when many of us gather with family and other people we don’t want to be stuck around a dinner table with, looking for awkward topics to argue about. Why not gay mushrooms? With this extremely scientific list, you will be equipped to win any mycological debate in your household! Feel free to chime in in the comments with your fave queer fungi!

Amethyst Deceiver (Laccaria amethystina)

Laccaria Amethystina, popularly known as the Amethyst Deceiver mushroom in Burnham Beeches on 26th October, 2020 in Burnham, England

Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

It sounds like a queer-coded Batman villain. It is bright purple. This mushroom is deceiving absolutely no one about its extreme homosexuality. 

Veiled Lady (Phallus indusiatus)

FRENCH POLYNESIA - OCTOBER 17: Bamboo fungus or Veiled lady (Phallus indusiatus), Phallaceae, French Polynesia

Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images

Found in abundance on 19th century beaches, staring at each other with barely repressed sapphic longing. 

Wood Blewit (Clitocybe nuda)

A collection of white capped and purple capped mushrooms

With hues from blue to pink to purple, it would be easy to declare this to be a bisexual mushroom. So I’m going to do exactly that. Also, both its common and Latin names are gently evocative of sex acts across genders, which is surely a win for bi visibility.

Witch’s Butter (Dacrymyces palmatus) 

Witches are gay, butter is gay (especially if it’s nut). In Eastern European legend, having this fungus appear on your house meant you’d been cursed by a witch. Curses are gay, too!

Giant Puffball (Calvatia gigantea)

Giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea / Langermannia gigantea) on the forest floor in late summer.

Photo by: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

This puffball reclaimed all the gay slurs thrown at it in the playground, joined a gym and now works security at the gay forest.

Ghost Fungus (Omphalotus nidiformis)

Omphalotus nidiformis, or ghost fungus growing green on an old piece of wood in a driveway at night

You partied all night with this club kid and never heard from them again. Your friends will be very patient during the three years you spend obsessing over this.

Schizophyllum commune

If you thought you were winning at defying the gender binary, think again – this beauty apparently has over 23,000 sexes. That’s a different one every day for 63 years!

Violet Coral Mushroom (Clavaria zollingeri) 

Probably there are many naturally occurring sex toys, but this is the only one that is the correct shade of Sex Toy Pink.

Cryptococcus gattii

Cryptococcus gattii fungus, computer illustration. This single-celled fungus is found in soil. It is one of the causes of the disease cryptococcosis, which can cause lesions in the lungs and central nervous system (brain and spinal cord).

According to cishet reporting, this fungus caused an infection outbreak because of gay sex, conveniently forgetting all the destruction straight fungus has wrought on the world. Homophobic!

Lion’s Mane Mushroom (Hericium erinaceus)

Lion's mane mushroom (Hericium erinaceus). 42 48.0495N 2 8.6048W Navarra, Spain. November 21, 2019

This mushroom was last seen in a lesbian club circa 2006 wearing a vest and skinny tie. 

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Sally

Sally lives in the UK. Her work has been featured in a Korean magazine about queer people and their pets, and a book about haunted prisons. She never intended for any of this to happen.

Sally has written 81 articles for us.

24 Comments

    • If you do want to forage mushrooms, get a good mushroom handbook or two or three and really learn to ID them. Better yet, find your local mushroom club and make some friends!
      DO NOT just go off a picture on the web. Good edible mushrooms often have look-alikes, and at least one of these mushrooms can seriously upset your digestive system.
      That said, I’ve occasionally seen Lion’s Mane in my local food co-op and it is very edible.

    • Always do your own research and consult an expert before eating foraged fungi. THAT BEING SAID, giant puffball is edible, and is one of the few edible mushrooms with no lookalikes, poisonous or otherwise. This was my first foraged mushroom, I found it on the bike path and biked a mile back to my car cradling a beachball sized fungus like a baby, it was a peak gay moment.

  1. The Ballerina Waxcap and the Ink Cap are in a pink girl/goth girl relationship.
    The Destroying Angel is incredibly beautiful and alluring and deadly much like a biblically accurate angel and also like queer femmes.

  2. Thanks for this wonderful content. It made me think of my gay friend V. who dressed up as a poisonous mushroom for halloween – the red one with white dots. They wanted to be very scary , poisonous and dangerous aka a mushroom you only eat once but instead were super cute and funny and talkative :)

  3. Fungi are the ultimate queer entities, being neither animal or plant…to me as an enby they sum up being non binary to perfection. Add in the fact they are mysterious, aesthetically stunning, & possibly delicious, mind bending, or poisonous & you have a multitude of gayness!
    My personal favourite is the Entoloma hochstetteri, which is native to New Zealand, I saw it there in 2007. Tiny, bright blue, & cute AF. I think it is a transmasc mushroom…

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