Bloody Brittlegill | Russula sanguinea Identification Guide

The First Impression and the Setting

The habitat is doing a lot of work before you even bend down. This is a pine specialist, and the classic setting is a stand of Scots or maritime pine on sandy or chalky ground, a dune woodland, a pine belt on limestone, or the mossy needle carpet under old planted pines. Among the needles you see a solid red cap, matt rather than glossy, sitting on a stout white stem, with the firm, chunky, slightly squat build of a brittlegill rather than the elegance of a bonnet or a webcap. Fruit bodies come singly or in loose groups. As soon as you pick one, two things register: the flesh is rigid and snaps, and the stem is not pure white but washed with pink or red over part of its length.

Reading the Cap

Cap width is usually 4 to 10 cm. The shape moves from convex through flat to shallowly depressed in the centre, and the margin stays smooth and unfurrowed except in very old specimens where fine grooves may appear. The surface is dry to slightly greasy in wet weather, and importantly it is matt, sometimes almost velvety-looking, rather than shiny and lacquered. Colour is a deep blood-red, carmine or rosy-red, often uneven, and it commonly fades in patches to pinkish, ochre-cream or nearly white where sun and rain have bleached it, especially at the centre of older caps.

Now test the skin. Take the cap edge between finger and thumbnail and try to peel it back toward the centre. In this species the cuticle is firmly attached and either refuses to peel or comes away only a short distance from the extreme margin. That resistance is a genuine field character, because several look-alike red brittlegills peel easily and far.

The Gills

Gill colour is pale: whitish at first, then cream and eventually pale ochre-cream as spores mature. They are fairly crowded, moderately narrow, and rather brittle, so running a finger across them crumbles the edges. The attachment is worth kneeling for. In this species the gills are adnate and frequently run a short way down the stem, giving a slightly decurrent look that many red brittlegills lack, and this shallow decurrence combined with a pinkish stem is a strong pairing. Some gills fork near the stem, and older or damaged gills often flush reddish or develop rusty-red edges and spots. There is no bruising to grey, blue or black.

The Stem and the Base

The stem is 4 to 8 cm long, 1 to 2.5 cm thick, cylindrical or slightly club-shaped, firm and solid at first and becoming spongy inside with age. What matters is the colour: it is at least partly flushed with pink, rose or carmine, usually strongest in the middle or lower part, over an otherwise whitish ground. Very few red brittlegills combine a red cap, cream gills and a red-flushed stem in this way. The base is usually whitish and may develop yellowish or brownish stains in old material, but it never bruises strongly grey or blackish. There is no ring, no volva and no cobwebby veil.

Flesh and Colour Change

Cut the fruit body in half from cap to base. The flesh is white, thick, firm and characteristically brittle, breaking with a clean snap like a stick of chalk rather than tearing into fibres. That texture comes from the rounded sphaerocyst cells that fill brittlegill flesh, and it is the fastest way to place an unknown mushroom in this group. Under the cap skin the flesh may be tinged pink. On exposure the cut surface stays white or dulls slowly to greyish-cream; there is no rapid reddening, no blackening, and no latex of any kind seeps from the gills or flesh. The absence of any milky exudate is what separates the brittlegills from the milkcaps, so always press a fresh gill surface and check.

Taking a Spore Print

Spore colour is decisive within this group and the difference between cream and ochre matters. Cut the cap off flush with the top of the stem and lay it gills-down on white paper or, better, on a small piece of clean glass so the deposit can be scraped into a heap and viewed against white. Cover it and leave it four to eight hours somewhere cool and still. Judge the colour on a thick deposit in daylight, not a thin dusting under a lamp. This species gives a cream to pale ochre print, clearly not pure white and clearly not deep ochre-yellow. Microscopically the spores are broadly ellipsoid with warts joined by fine connecting lines into a partial network, and they are amyloid in Melzer's iodine, as in all brittlegills.

Substrate, Season and Ecology

The fungus is mycorrhizal with pine, forming root sheaths that trade minerals and water for sugars, so it will only be found where pines grow: plantations, dune systems, calcareous pine woods and old parkland pines. It prefers well-drained sandy or limy soils and it does not fruit on wood, on dung or in pure broadleaf woodland. The season runs from late summer to late autumn, and fruiting comes in flushes a week or so after significant rain. Because the mycelium is tied to living roots, productive spots repeat year after year, so it is worth recording exactly where you find it.

Separating the Look-alikes on Morphology

• The Sickener, Russula emetica, has a shiny, brighter scarlet cap whose skin peels easily and far, pure white gills, a pure white stem with no red flush, and a white spore print. It grows in wet acid places, often in sphagnum and under conifers on bog margins.
• Rosy Brittlegill, Russula rosea, is a broadleaf species of beech woods with extremely hard flesh, a matt rose-red cap, white to cream gills that often fork, and a stem that may be pink-flushed. Its exceptional hardness and its habitat separate it.
• Primrose Brittlegill, Russula sardonia, also grows under pine and also has a purple-red to wine-red cap with a purple-flushed stem, but its gills are a distinctive pale lemon-yellow and its spore print is pale yellow-ochre, both more strongly yellow than in the present species.
• Russula queletii and Russula torulosa share pine and purple-red tones, but they are darker and more purple-violet, with more strongly coloured stems and, in queletii, a stronger tendency to grow with spruce.
• Crab Brittlegill, Russula xerampelina, has a dark wine-red to purple cap but its stem and flesh stain brownish where handled and its print is deep ochre.
• Any red-capped fungus that releases a milky or coloured juice from cut gills is a milkcap, not a brittlegill.

Field Checklist

Under pine; matt blood-red cap with a barely peeling skin; cream gills that run slightly down the stem; a stem visibly flushed pink or red; white, chalk-brittle flesh with no juice; and a cream to pale ochre spore print. When all six line up, the name holds.