Part 17

Cap and stem: milky cocoa-coloured, zoned with reddish brown.

Gills: pale ochraceous then flushed red-brown.

Flesh: similar to gills, smelling strongly of rancid oil, and exuding a white, thin milk-like liquid which becomes very, very faintly yellow on exposure to the air.

Common wherever oak is growing.

~L. rufus~ (Fries) Fries

Rufous milk-cap

Cap: width 50-90 mm. Stem: length 50-90 mm; width 10-15 mm.

Cap: dark red-brown with a distinct, usually sharp ‘bump’ in centre.

Stem: pale red-brown throughout or whitish at base.

Gills: pale reddish brown and exuding a white, unchanging milk-like fluid.

In pine woods and less frequently with birches on acid heaths.

~L. torminosus~ (Fries) S. F. Gray

Woolly milk-cap

Cap: width 40-150 mm. Stem: length 60-100 mm; width 15-30 mm.

Cap: pale strawberry-pink or pale salmon colour, distinctly zoned, slimy when wet at centre and strongly shaggy fibrillose at margin.

Stem and gills: pale strawberry colour.

Flesh: tinged salmon-pink and exuding a white unchangeable milk-like liquid.

Frequent where birches grow.

~Amanita muscaria~ (Fries) Hooker

Fly agaric

Cap: width 100-175 mm. Stem: width 30-40 mm; length 150-275 mm.

Description:

Cap: bright scarlet to orange-red with scattered whitish or yellowish fragments of veil particularly towards the centre and hanging down from the margin, viscid when moist, striate at margin with age.

Stem: white, striate above the soft easily torn, although prominent, ring which is white above and yellow below; stem-base swollen and ornamented with patches of yellowish or white veil-fragments which form concentric rings or ridges of tissue.

Gills: white, free, crowded, fairly thick, minutely toothed at their edge.

Flesh: soft, lacking distinctive smell, or at times slightly earthy and white, yellowish below cap-centre.

Spore-print: white.

Spores: long, hyaline under the microscope, ellipsoid, smooth about 10 × 7 µm in size (10-13 × 7-8 µm).