The mushroom cap is the most obvious part of the substrate, like a hat. There are various shapes, generally common bell-shaped, bucket hat-shaped, hemispherical, spreading shape, funnel-shaped and so on. The color of the cap is very complex, although it can be basically identified as white, yellow, brown, gray, red, green, purple and other colors, but there are deep, light, light, dense differences in various types of colors, and more commonly mixed hues. They can be different in color when young and old and mature, and the periphery is either fully rimmed and neat, or wavy and untidy or torn.

The surface of the cap has a cortex. The mycelium in the cortex contains different pigments, thus making the cap a variety of different colors. Below the cortex is the flesh, which generally consists of long, filamentous hyphae, while some are composed of enlarged vesicle-like hyphae. The color of the flesh and the change of color after injury often varies according to species. Generally the flesh of the fungus is mostly white or stained white, some yellowish or reddish color and so on.

Some mushrooms have cysts at the stipe, called stipe-borne cysts. These cysts are made up of cells that can be seen through a microscope, and they generally grow in the pith of the mushroom.

Many mushrooms will also have scales, most of which are found on the cap or on the stipe, and which are a kind of papery mass, consisting of a large number of fibrous cells and a small number of expanding cells; while some mushroom scales are of a membranous mass which is easily broken up, and which consist of a small number of fibrous cells and a large number of expanding cells. Expanded cells are the equivalent of cement and fiber cells are the equivalent of rebar, so many mushrooms we can distinguish mushroom species by the softness and hardness of their scales, the degree of shedding, color, shape.