Saffron Milk Cap

Lactarius deliciosus

Edible

Also called delicious milk cap, red pine mushroom.

The saffron milk cap is an orange, zoned milk cap that grows under pines and other conifers. Cut or broken, it oozes orange latex, and its gills and cap stain green with age or handling. North American collections include several close relatives.

Two saffron milk caps with pale orange, funnel-shaped caps in grass and moss

The tell

Carrot-orange milk oozes from cut gills and 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. Orange with darker concentric bands, slightly sticky when wet, and often stained green in patches.
Underside
Crowded orange gills, attached to slightly running down the stem. They bruise green.
Stem
Orange, often hollow, sometimes with darker orange pits. No ring and no cup.
Flesh
Pale orange, brittle, exuding orange latex where cut. The latex and cut surfaces slowly turn green.
Spore print
Cream to pale yellow.
Size
Cap 2 to 5 1/2 inches (5 to 14 cm) wide; stem 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 8 cm) tall.

Where and when

Where and when it grows

Habitat
Under pines and other conifers, including planted pines, often in grass or needle litter.
Grows on
Soil, mycorrhizal with conifer roots.
Season
Late summer through fall; fall into winter on the Pacific Coast.
Range
Reported across North America under this name, though North American collections belong to several closely related species and varieties.

Lookalikes

What the saffron milk cap gets confused with

Each card says how to tell the two apart.

  1. Woolly milk cap (Lactarius torminosus)

    Pinkish with a shaggy, woolly cap margin, and its latex is white rather than orange. Field guides list it as poisonous, causing stomach upset.

  2. Bleeding milk cap (Lactarius rubrilacteus)

    A western relative whose latex is dark red to wine-colored rather than orange. It also stains green.

Edibility

What the field guides say

Edible

Field guides list the saffron milk cap as edible, and it is widely collected in Europe. North American guides rate local forms from good to mediocre, with a grainy texture. Its main toxic confusion is the woolly milk cap and other milk caps with white, acrid latex, which cause gastrointestinal upset.

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 saffron milk cap

Why does the saffron milk cap turn green?

Its orange latex and the tissue around it turn green when cut, bruised or old. The green patches on the cap and gills are a key field mark, not a sign of decay.

Is saffron milk cap edible?

Field guides list it as edible. Milk caps with white latex, such as the woolly milk cap, are listed as poisonous, so latex color is the main point of separation.

Where does saffron milk cap grow?

On the ground under pines and other conifers, including pine plantations and parks. It fruits from late summer through fall, and later into winter along the Pacific Coast.

Sources

Where these facts come from

  1. Lactarius deliciosus group

    MushroomExpert.com

  2. Lactarius deliciosus

    Beaty Biodiversity Museum, University of British Columbia

  3. Lactarius deliciosus

    MykoWeb, California Fungi

  4. Lactarius deliciosus

    Index Fungorum

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