Not Hot Orange 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

Orange Lactarius     Subgenus Cap orange or yellowish orange Latex usually orange or yellow

Links from Look-alikes Slimy Lactarius     Subgenus Cap sticky or slimy when fresh

Diagnosis

• Not acrid
  
• Sometimes sticky
  
• If zonate, then very faintly

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 5" across; zonate; slippery when wet
Flesh white to pale orange
Latex orange, usually scanty; slowly staining fruiting body tissue deep yellowish orange, then green
Under conifers, especially pine

Cap sticky
Latex and flesh slowly staining dull red where cut
Under cedars or among sphagnum mosses in swamps and bogs

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