Deeper yellowish 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 entirely yellow or light brown

Not foul-smelling or smelling of marzipan,
but it may have a fruity or other kind of odor

Diagnosis

• Cap dull straw colored, amber, honey colored, or yellowish brown

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 3" across; not peeling at all; margin often irregular; surface often waxy-feeling and scrobiculate
Gills very thick, waxy, distant, pale yellow; partial gills plentiful
Growing under hardwoods

Cap up to 5" across; some shade of yellowish ochre; pruinose; hardly peeling at all
Gills close, forked near the stem, creamy yellow
Growing under hardwoods

Cap up to 3 1/4" across; margin tuberculate-striate; viscid; peeling 1/2 of the way to the center, flesh greyish below the cuticle
Stem white, staining yellow brown
Odor fruity-oily

Cap up to 3 1/4" across; convex to broadly umbonate; peeling 1/2 of the way to the center
Stem concolorous, spongy to firm
Under beech

Lookalikes: Russula alutacea Cap up to 6" across; deep vinaceous to straw colored, often with greenish tones as the cap gets lighter, peeling 1/4 of the way to the center Gills yellow ochre, thick, distant, strongly interveined Stem white with a flush of rose at the base, very firm Spore print deep ochre Phenol on flesh slowly bright purple Russula crustosa Cap cuticle areolate

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