Lookalike
Violet Webcap
Cortinarius violaceus
Dark violet rather than blue, with a cobweb-like veil on young specimens, a rusty-brown spore print and no latex.
Indigo Milk Cap
Lactarius indigo
Edible
Also called blue milk mushroom, indigo milky.
The indigo milk cap is one of the few blue mushrooms in North America: cap, gills, stem and latex are all indigo to silvery blue. It grows under oaks and pines in the East and Southwest, and people look it up because a blue mushroom seems unlikely.
Lactarius indigo
Photo coming
The tell
Blue all over, and cut flesh bleeds blue milk that slowly turns green.
Field marks
What to look at
Cap, underside and stem show in a photo. The spore print does not, and it is often the deciding check.
- Cap
- Convex with a sunken center, becoming vase-shaped. Indigo blue with darker concentric zones, fading to silvery gray-blue as it dries, and staining green.
- Underside
- Crowded blue gills, attached and slightly running down the stem, staining green when bruised.
- Stem
- Blue, firm and often hollow, sometimes with darker blue spots. No ring and no cup.
- Flesh
- Whitish to pale blue, showing blue where cut. The latex is indigo blue and slowly turns green on exposure.
- Spore print
- Cream to yellowish.
- Size
- Cap 2 to 6 inches (5 to 15 cm) wide; stem 1 to 3 inches (2 to 8 cm) tall.
Where and when
Where and when it grows
- Habitat
- On the ground in oak and pine woods, and mixed forests with those trees.
- Grows on
- Soil, mycorrhizal with oak and pine roots.
- Season
- Summer through fall; into winter in the Gulf states and Southwest.
- Range
- Eastern North America and the Southwest, south through Mexico into Central America.
Lookalikes
What the indigo milk cap gets confused with
Each card says how to tell the two apart.
Silver-blue milky (Lactarius paradoxus)
Grayish-blue cap with purplish to orange-brown gills, and its latex is reddish brown.
Lactarius chelidonium
A smaller, grayer blue milk cap whose latex is yellowish to yellow-brown.
Edibility
What the field guides say
Edible
Field guides list the indigo milk cap as edible, with a coarse, grainy texture, and record it being sold in markets in Mexico and Central America. The blue latex is the identifying feature: no other North American mushroom combines blue gills with blue milk.
This page states what field guides record. It is not advice to eat, taste or handle anything, and a photo cannot settle edibility. If someone has eaten a wild mushroom that may be toxic, call poison control (1-800-222-1222 in the US) right away, before symptoms start: the deadliest species act hours later.
FAQ
Questions about the indigo milk cap
Is the blue mushroom real?
Yes. The indigo milk cap is blue in every part, including the latex that oozes from cut gills. Older specimens fade to silver-gray and develop green stains.
Is indigo milk cap edible?
Field guides list it as edible and record that it is sold in markets in Mexico and Central America. Its texture is described as grainy.
Where does the indigo milk cap grow?
On the ground under oaks and pines in eastern North America and the Southwest. It fruits from summer into fall, and later in warmer southern states.
Sources
Where these facts come from
- Lactarius indigo
MushroomExpert.com
- Indigo Milky
Missouri Department of Conservation
- Lactarius indigo
Index Fungorum
Also on Mushrooms.id
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