Russula
Fungal Boogie is a new CD by Zoe Wood and Larry Evans features 13 songs about fungi, edible and otherwise, in a range of musical styles that includes blues, calypso, polka, and rockabilly. Listen to a sample of the song "All About The Russula" (525 kb). To hear clips from the rest of the CD, click here.
The Russula family is the most common forest mushroom we encounter. The white spores, closely spaced gills, and a stem that breaks like chalk are all good field characteristics. Russulas often have brightly colored caps, but these are not much good for identification as they fade to orange, green, yellow, or white; some collections from a single site will have mushrooms from every color in the rainbow.
Flavors are important in identification. Most Russulas have a burning, acrid taste some compare to wasabi or horseradish, but some species are mild and edible. Another important factor is staining. Scrape the stem and gills of each Russula you hope to identify, and observe any color changes that happen over the next 15 MINUTES. These stains are slow to appear but very useful in identification.
To see pictures of more members of this family identified, click here. And to see images of a similar shroom that produces milky secretions, look at the Lactarius page.
One of the 4 or 5 sorts of green Russula they find in Alaska.
The red cap Russula emetica will do just what the name implies: if you are able to get one down, your stomach will send it back up. Like many Russula mushrooms, it has a very hot spicy or "acrid" flavor that burns the tongue. Once you have tasted this mushroom, you will remember it for a long time.
This is one of the blackening Russulas; we have 3 members of this group that I've encountered in Montana: R. subnigricans, pictured, then R. densifolia, which stains red and then blackens, and R. nigricans, which is darker in all aspects.
These five photos depict the eruption and exhumation of what appears to be a secotioid form of Russula xerampelina. Scent was strongest in the browner areas. Vaguely fishy. a bit more fruity than the
regular Russula xerampelina we would pick whenever conditions were just so. This secotioid version seems to be the result of a lot of environmental insults but it persists nontheless. Look at the cracks on the cap
and the stipe. This would seem to indicate periods of varying growth, drought, and or rapid expansion when water became available again.
Do squirrels eat them?
I left most of them on the ground, in an area I was picking through, and they laid there a while and then they were all gone. Something got it.
