White Hot 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

Latex white, abundant in fresh specimens, extremely acrid
Cap up to 10" across; white to buff, sometimes with tinges of other colors
Gills sometimes extremely close

Diagnosis

• Entire fruiting body white, sometimes with pink or greenish tones, or fading to tan in age
  
• Cap margin typically becoming uplifted in age, making the whole fruiting body vase-shaped

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 10" across; staining brownish; conspicuously inrolled margin of soft cottony tissue present in young specimens
Latex white; not changing color itself, but staining fruiting body brown
In all types of woods, but usually under oak or hemlock
Spore print white to pale ochre-buff

Latex drying pale greenish; flesh stains and dries that color
Gills extremely crowded, often pale pinkish before staining
Cap up to 6" across
Usually under hardwoods

Entire fruiting body fading slightly to tan in age, but no other color changes
Gills extremely crowded.
Cap up to 6" across
Under hardwoods

Cap up to 5 1/2" across, velutinate
Latex drying reddish-brown and staining gills that color
Gills often forking, crowded
Entire fruiting body staining reddish brown with age

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