BlueCap Lactarius     Section

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

Diagnosis

• Cap blue, slate blue, or silvery blue, often with orange tones (sometimes orange with blue tones!)
  
• Sometimes weakly zonate

Narrow down your identification:

Flesh blue, becoming yellow near the gills
Cap up to 3" across; at first blue, with orange tints, rapidly becoming completely orange with greenish tints and staining greenish
Latex yellow, scanty, becoming yellowish brown
Under confers, especially pine

Entire fruiting body blue to slate-blue, often rather greyish.
Latex concolorous
Cap up to 6" across; often zonate
Spore print creamy yellow
In oak and pine woods

Cap up to 3 1/4" across; silvery blue when young, zoned with tints of green and purple; slimy; slowly staining green when bruised or cut
Latex dark vinaceous brown; scanty; staining green
Spore print buff to yellow
Under pine

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