Ugly Milkcap
Lactarius turpis is a Eurasian species of fungus, commonly known as the ugly milk-cap or green birch milk cap in English. Its messy, dirty appearance is characteristic of the species and gives it its English name and the Latin species epithet, turpis.
Scientific Name – Lactarius necator
Common Names:
Cap Llaeth Hyll (CY), Mleczaj Oliwkowobrązowo (PL), Sötét Tejelőgomba (HU)
Please note that each and every mushroom you come across may vary in appearance to these photos.
Cap
5–14 cm across. Convex at first with inrolled margin, then flattened and slightly depressed at the centre of the cap. The skin is yellowish olive, olive green, olive brown to deep olive, almost greenish black when old. Slightly viscid or sticky, sometimes even slimy when wet, matt when dry. Its margin can be velutinous.
Gills
Fairly crowded, almost fully attached to the stem (adnate) or slightly decurrent. Starting pale cream, becoming ochre-cream with age, their edge is entire. The gills bruise buff if damaged and produce latex.
Milk
White and moderately copious, unchanging, its taste is very acrid and unpleasant.
Stem
4–6 cm tall, 1–2.5 wide. More or less cylindrical, but its base is often tapered. Usually concolorous with the cap or slightly paler. Smooth to slightly wrinkled, sticky when wet, irregularly pitted with darker olive spots.
Flesh
Thick, firm, brittle, hollow in the stem. Whitish, becoming brownish once exposed to air. Changing to violet-purple in KOH or Ammonia.
Habitat
Grows mostly in small groups, preferably on wet soil in parks, woodlands, cemeteries, alongside golf courses. Mycorrhizal with Birch (Betula) and Spruce (Picea). This distinctive milkcap mushroom is found throughout northern and central Europe.
Possible Confusion
It is hard to confuse with anything if you are familiar with trees, as all the potential lookalikes have different mycorrhizal partners.
The Beech Milkcap (Lactarius blennius), pictured, has an olive-grey, sticky (when wet) skin and also produces copious amounts of latex, but it is mycorrhizal with Beech.
The Nimbus Milkcap (Lactarius fluens) looks rather similar than Beech Milkcap, growing on the same habitat as (also mycorrhizal with Beech), but it has pale cap margin, its stem is white, and its latex is not as hot as Beech the Milkcap’s.
Other Facts
The generic name Lactarius means producing milk (lactating) – a reference to the milky latex that is exuded from the gills of milkcap fungi when they are cut or torn. The specific epithet turpis comes directly from Latin and means ugly. If you are not put off by the name and se;pulchral appearance of the Ugly Milkcap, there’s another deterrent. In some northern European countries there was a tradition of boiling these milkcaps and then using them to spice up other mushroom dishes; however: there is now worrying evidence that the Ugly Milkcap may be carcinogenic, and so it should be considered as poisonous. This is a great pity because it is one of the few millkcaps that is easy to identify in the field with a high degree of confidence.
