Hot Red 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

Cap red or pink, with perhaps some yellow or orange mixed in

Flesh not changing color when bruised, or changing to brown (instead of black)

Diagnosis

• Taste acrid, peppery, hot

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 4" across; viscid to tacky; bright scarlet but fading in age; peeling 1/3 to all of the way to the center, underlying flesh pink
Taste very acrid
Found in sphagnum bogs under pine

Cap up to 4" across; yellowish red to deep red; viscid when wet; rugose-tuberculate, often with radiating wrinkles; margin striate; peeling 1/3-1/2 of the way to the center
Taste slowly, slightly to moderately acrid

Cap up to 4" across; deep red or purplish red to pink or almost white; barely peeling at all; striate in age
Flesh firm to hard
Taste slight to moderately acrid, and sometimes also bitter
Under pines

Cap up to 3 1/4" across; sometimes viscid, shiny; deep pink, sometimes with paler, yellower areas; peeling 3/4 of the way to the center
Stem slightly clavate, spongy
Often attached to rotted wood or humus

Cap up to 2" across; scarlet to dull red, often spotted with white; minutely rivulose to tuberculate; scarcely peeling at all
Taste quickly acrid
Growing under hardwoods

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