White Unchanging 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 color constant
Stem (only!) perhaps aging or bruising a different color, but only slightly, and not a really dark one

Diagnosis

• Cap up to 8" across; white to ivory, felty on top; soon funnel-shaped
  
• Gills crowded, cream to greyish buff; partial gills abundant
  
• Stem usually short, thick

Narrow down your identification:

Taste mild to slightly acrid
Odor odd, slightly disagreeable
Spore print white to pale cream

Flesh bruising reddish brown; smelling strongly of rotting fish, especially when old

Stem slowly bruising or aging brown
No odor
Taste mild

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