A small, very slimy, dark brownish-gray milk cap of eastern conifer forests with a pale buff margin. Its white latex slowly stains surfaces yellowish to greenish, and it has a burning-acrid taste. Larger western relatives replace it in western North America.
Eastern North America, north and east of a line from northern Michigan to the southern Appalachians. In western North America it is replaced by the larger Lactarius kauffmanii and L. pseudomucidus.
Characteristics
Cap: 3-6 cm, convex becoming planoconvex or shallowly depressed; sticky to slimy, bald, finely rugged; very dark brownish gray or grayish brown, fading to brown, margin pale buff. Gills: broadly attached, close, with frequent short gills, whitish, sometimes stained greenish to yellowish by the latex. Stem: 2-4 cm long, about 1 cm thick, equal, sticky, bald, without potholes, brownish. Flesh: whitish to brownish, unchanging. Latex: white, slowly staining surfaces and white paper yellowish to greenish. Odor: fragrant. Taste: quickly burning-acrid. Spore print: white. Spores: 7-8.5 x 6.5-7.5 µm, subglobose to broadly ellipsoid, with amyloid warts and ridges 0.5-1 µm high forming a wide-meshed reticulum.
