Smooth Blackening Russula     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

No latex
Cap usually brighter colored than Lactarius
Stalk usually white or tinged with color of cap

Only cap colors white to cream or buff, or dark brown to black

Cap and flesh starting out white or creamy, bruising or aging dark brown or black
Break the mushroom open to judge this feature: see if the flesh changes color. The color change can take up to 20 minutes, so be patient

Diagnosis

• Cap surface smooth, sometimes shiny

Narrow down your identification:

Cap cuticle not peeling the slightest bit
Flesh and cap aging dull black; bruising dull black quickly, with no intermediate red stage

Cap darkens to dull brown, eventually blackish with age; peeling 1/2 of the way to the center
Flesh turns red, then quickly greyish black when bruised
Taste usually hot to very hot

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