Fragrant Lactarius     SubSection

This is a key to gilled mushrooms, that is, mushrooms having a definite cap with a fertile surface consisting of gills. The fruiting body usually also has a stem, although that may be lateral or absent (usually, then, the mushroom is growing from wood). You can use this key to identify mushrooms that you find.

Flesh without fibers, fracturing with the same sort of break as a piece of chalk
Spore and gill color limited to white, yellow, or ochre
Mycorrhizal: occuring only on the ground, and only when there are trees nearby
No ring or volva on stalk
All fleshy-stemmed mushrooms whose gills exude a latex when cut go here

Fruiting bodies (especially the gills) exuding a liquid (called a latex) when broken
Stalk (and sometimes even gills) usually concolorous with cap

Cap brown to light brown or greyish, sometimes with lilac tinges or spotted; often fading to buff; not scrobiculate, often umbonate

Diagnosis

• Fruiting body with a smell, either a so-called maple syrup-fenugreek smell, or one resembling the smell of drying latex paint
  
• Latex clear or white, often scanty

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 6" across; whitish tan to greyish tan (it looks kind of like its been frosted)
Spore print buff

Fruiting body up to 2" across; deep reddish brown at first, fading in age

Cap up to 3" across; often zonate, but indistinctly so; slightly sticky when wet, and then also especially zonate; a bit shiny when dry (from slime layer)
Latex white or clear, staining gills pinkish

Cap up to 4 1/2" across; purplish brown when very young, fading to reddish and then pinkish brown; staining pale olive in KOH
Taste slowly and mildly acrid
Spore print pinkish buff
Under oaks

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