page_title: Lactarius fuliginosus
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Lactarius fuliginosus / Description
caption_attribution_description: Lactarius fuliginosus (Fr.) Fr.
context_page_description: Lactarius fuliginosus, commonly known as the sooty milkcap, is a species of fungus in the family Russulaceae. The medium-sized fruit bodies have velvety, grayish-brown caps and crowded gills. It is found in deciduous forests of Asia, Europe, and North America.
context_section_description: The cap is convex to flattened, sometimes with a small central depression, and measures 4.5–12.5 cm (1.8–4.9 in) in diameter. The surface of the cap is dry, smooth, and has a velvety texture. It sometimes develops small wrinkles in the center, while the cap margin develops irregular grooves in maturity. Its colour is buff to grayish-brown to dark fawn, sometimes with darker spots and a lighter margin. The crowded gills have an adnate to slightly decurrent attachment to the stipe. They have an olive-buff to pinkish-buff colour, and stain pinkish. The cylindric stipe measures 4–8.5 cm (1.6–3.3 in) long by 1–2 cm (0.4–0.8 in) thick and tapers to the base. Its surface texture is similar to the cap, but is coloured paler, and is whitish near the top. The flesh is whitish, but stains pinkish where injured; it is thick and firm in the cap and stipe. It has no significant odor and a mild to slightly acrid taste. The mushroom's sparse latex is white but dries pinkish, imparting that colour when it stains the gills and flesh. Lactarius fuliginosus is not edible, and may be somewhat poisonous.
  The spore print is pinkish buff. The spores are spherical to broadly ellipsoid, measuring 7.4–9.2 by 6.6–8.4 µm. The spore surface is covered with an almost complete reticulum with narrow ridges up to about 1 µm high, and irregular warts that stain amyloid with Melzer's reagent. The basidia (spore-bearing cells) are somewhat club-shaped, four-spored, and measure 40–55 by 10–12 µm. The cap cuticle is in the form of a trichoepithelium measuring 50–100 µm thick comprising cylindric terminal hyphae measuring 20–45 by 5–8 µm.
caption: Mature gills are creamy ochre coloured; the stipe base is lighter coloured at the base and immediately under the gills.
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