Species flashcards

Description

Cap: 5–11 cm across; convex when young, soon centrally depressed and later funnel-shaped. Brick-red, flesh-pink or orange-brown, usually with darker concentric zones. The margin remains inrolled for a long time and is conspicuously long and shaggy-haired.

Gills: Whitish with a pale pink tinge, crowded, attached to the stem or slightly decurrent. They exude white, unchanging latex when damaged.

Stem: 3.5–6 cm tall and 1–3 cm thick, cylindrical, smooth, pale flesh-pink or paler than the cap. Sometimes with darker pits or spots.

Flesh: White, firm and unchanging when cut. Latex abundant, milk-white and unchanging, with a burning acrid taste.

Spores: Spore print pale cream to yellowish; spores 8–10.2 × 5.8–6.6 µm, broadly ellipsoid, with partly reticulate amyloid ornamentation.

Occurrence: A mycorrhizal species closely associated with birch. It grows in damp, usually acidic birch and mixed woodland, parks and gardens from summer to autumn.

Toxicity: Poisonous, causing severe gastrointestinal symptoms when raw. Although used after prolonged soaking, parboiling and salting in some traditions, consumption is not recommended.

Lookalikes: May resemble the bearded milkcap, which has a paler, cream-coloured cap. The oak-associated mairei milkcap has an even more heavily hairy cap margin.

Note: The name Lactarius derives from Latin lac, meaning milk, referring to its latex. torminosus means causing colic, referring to the consequences of eating it raw.

Species description: First described by Jacob Christian Schäffer in 1774; Samuel Frederick Gray transferred it to Lactarius in 1821.

Taxonomy

1. PhylumBasidiomycota
2. ClassAgaricomycetes
3. OrderRussulales
4. FamilyRussulaceae
5. GenusLactarius

• Species: Lactarius torminosus
• Original author: Jacob Christian Schäffer (1774)
• Current combination: (Schaeff.) Gray (1821)
• English name: Woolly milkcap
• Ecological status: mycorrhizal
• Edibility: poisonous