Lactarius volemus var. flavus (illustrated at the bottom) is found under oaks and in pine-oak woods from Texas to Tennessee and Alabama; it features a yellow cap and stem.
Description:
Ecology: Mycorrhizal with oaks and other hardwoods, as well as conifers; growing alone, scattered, or gregariously; summer and fall; widely distributed in eastern North America.
Cap: 3-13 cm; at first convex with an inrolled margin; becoming flat, with a central depression, shallowly vase-shaped, or (rarely) with a slight bump over the disc, the margin even; smooth or slightly wrinkled, but usually finely velvety to the touch, at least when young; brownish orange, orangish brown, or sometimes lighter--or sometimes darker (approaching deep brownish red); without concentric zones of color, but often darker towards the center.
Gills: Attached to the stem or running slightly down it; close; creamy white; discoloring brown where injured; often forking near the margin.
Stem: 5-10 cm long; 0.5-2.5 cm thick; colored like the cap or paler; equal or tapering to base; smooth; sometimes vaguely "ribbed" longitudinally; solid or becoming hollowing.
Flesh: White; staining slowly brown when sliced.
Milk: White; copious; sometimes becoming brownish on exposure to air; staining tissues brown; staining white paper brown.
Odor and Taste: Odor rather fishy (like a dead shad, which anglers will tell you is probably the most malodorous freshwater fish); taste mild.
Chemical Reactions: KOH olive on cap surface; orange on milk.
Spore Print: White.
Microscopic Features: Spores 6.5-9.5 x 5.5-9 µ; subglobose or occasionally broadly ellipsoid; ornamentation 0.4-0.8 µ high, as widely spaced amyloid ridges forming completed reticula. Pleuromacrocystidia conspicuous and abundant; subcylindric to subfusiform; thick-walled; arising in the subhymenium or gill trama; to 150 x 15 µ. Cheilocystidia similar but shorter. Pileipellis a lamprotrichoderm with a turf of cylindric to narrowly fusiform pileocystidia measuring up to about 100 x 5 µ.
REFERENCES: (Fries, 1821) Fries, 1838. (Saccardo, 1887; Coker, 1918; Kauffman, 1918; Hesler & Smith, 1979; Smith, Smith & Weber, 1979; Weber & Smith, 1985; Arora, 1986; Heilmann-Clausen et al., 1998; Phillips, 1991/2005; Lincoff, 1992; Metzler & Metzler, 1992; Montoya et al., 1996a; Roody, 2003; McNeil, 2006; Miller & Miller, 2006; Kuo, 2007; Binion et al., 2008.) Herb. Kuo 06239510, 08240203, 07180707, 06270805.
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