Lactarius mammosus
Description
Lactarius mammosus is a species of fungus belonging to the family Russulaceae. It is native to Europe and Northern America. The cap is flat in youth with a curled brim, later wrinkled, often with a central hump and ribbed at the brim. Skin smooth to slightly velvety, soon scaly cracked, dry, olive gray-brown, puffy to banded. The flesh is creamy, and reddish, the taste is mild to slightly bitter or burning, and the aroma is sweet, coconut. Milk white, graying on the leaves, soon burning. It grows abundantly in places in drier coniferous and mixed forests under pines and birch.
Mushroom Identification
Cap
3 - 9 cm in diameter, fleshy, first convex, with a curved edge, later convex-spread, concave-spread, mostly with a tubercle in the middle, with a spread edge. The surface of the cap is fibrous-scaly or woolly-fibrous, dry, bluish-gray, gray-brown, dark brown, black-brown, dark gray-brown, sometimes with a purple or pink tinge, fades to yellowish.
Gills
The gills are thick, narrow, ingrown, slightly descending to the leg, first whitish, yellowish, pale, later reddish-reddish, browning in contact.
Spores
6.5-9 * 5-6.5 microns, oval-rounded.
Spore Print
Whitish or creamy.
Stem
3 - 7 cm high, 0.8 - 2 cm in diameter, cylindrical, dense, first solid, later with a hollow channel, smooth, first whitish, later the same color as the surface of the cap, in places of contact becomes ocher-brown color.
Flesh
The flesh is dense, brittle, whitish, dark under the skin, reddish-reddish in the stalk, with a sweet taste and no pronounced odor, in mature specimens with a pleasant odor. Milk juice is white, does not change color in the air, first sweet, then burning, bitter in taste.
Habitat
It grows from July to October, in coniferous and mixed forests, on dry, sandy soils, among moss, in groups.
History
The species has been described by several mycologists known under various names accepted synonymously, but almost all unused.
The binomial name is the one determined by the Elias Magnus Fries as Agaricus mammosus, to be verified in his book Epicrisis systematis mycologici, seu synopsis hymenomycetum from 1838, being the currently valid name (2020).
The name Lactarius fuscus, introduced by the French mycologist Léon Louis Rolland, published in volume 15 of the mycological journal Société Mycologique de France in 1899, is not infrequently used in mycological books. Although accepted only as a synonym,
The epithet is derived from the Latin word (Latin mammosus = daddy), due to the appearance of the hump in the center of the cap.
Synonyms
Lactarius mammosus var. monstruosus Cooke (1833)
Agaricus mammosus (Fr.) Weinm. (1836)
Lactifluus mammosus (Fr.) O.Kuntze (1891)
Lactarius fuscus Rolland (1899)
Lactarius mammosus var. minor Boud. (1911)
Lactarius confusus S.Lundell (1939)
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: billyd (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Vavrin (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 3 - Author: walt sturgeon (Mycowalt) (CC BY-SA 3.0)