Curry Milkcap

The Curry Milkcap is a small, dark, unassuming woodland fungus whose scent does the identifying. Fresh fruitbodies are already aromatic, and dried material becomes overwhelmingly so, filling a collecting box with a warm spicy odour usually compared to curry powder or fenugreek.

Morphologically it sits among the small red-brown milkcaps with dry caps, unchanging latex and pale spore deposits. What sets it apart is scale and shade: it is markedly smaller and darker than the Rufous Milkcap, with a slender, often crooked stipe and a slightly wrinkled cap surface.

The aromatic compounds responsible are volatile and concentrate on drying, so herbarium collections retain the scent for years. This makes it one of the few fungi that can be identified with reasonable confidence long after collection.

Cap

Small, 2–5 cm across, convex then flattening and often becoming slightly depressed while keeping a small pointed nipple at the centre. The surface is dry, matt and often finely wrinkled or roughened near the disc, coloured dark chestnut, red-brown or deep liver-brown, fading somewhat with age. The margin becomes wavy and may be faintly grooved in old fruitbodies.

Gills

Crowded and narrow, adnate to shortly decurrent, pale reddish buff to cinnamon, darkening with age and spotting brown where bruised.

Stipe

Slender, 3–6 cm tall and 4–10 mm thick, often slightly curved or compressed, dry and smooth, coloured like the cap or darker below and paler at the apex. The base is clothed in whitish mycelial down that traps litter and moss fragments.

Flesh and latex

The flesh is reddish buff and thin, with the brittle texture typical of the group. Latex is scanty, watery white and unchanging, and does not stain the tissue strongly. The odour is the defining character: warm, spicy and aromatic, likened to curry, fenugreek or camphor, faint in very fresh material and powerful once the fruitbody begins to dry. Spore deposit pale cream.

This milkcap grows on soil, moss and deep litter in both conifer and broadleaf woodland, with a preference for acidic ground. It is regularly found under spruce, pine, oak and beech, often among mosses, on banks and along shaded woodland paths.

It fruits from late summer through autumn, usually in scattered small groups rather than dense troops, and can be easy to overlook because of its size and dark colouring. The species is widespread across Europe, and closely comparable populations occur in northern Asia and eastern North America.

Like other milkcaps it is ectomycorrhizal, forming sheathing associations with the fine roots of a range of conifer and broadleaf hosts. Its tolerance of acidic, humus-rich soils allows it to occupy both plantation conifer woodland and old broadleaf stands, and it is frequently found in the moss layer where litter decomposition is slow.

The strongly aromatic volatiles it releases are thought to play a role in deterring or attracting particular invertebrates and may also assist spore dispersal by drawing fungus-visiting flies. Its scanty latex offers the usual wound-sealing defence, and the small fruitbodies decay quickly, cycling nutrients back into the litter horizon.

The Rufous Milkcap (Lactarius rufus) is much larger, brighter brick red and entirely without aroma. Lactarius subdulcis is paler cinnamon with a smoother cap, grows chiefly under beech, and lacks the spicy scent. Lactarius helvus shares a very similar aromatic odour but is far larger, pale greyish buff and felty, and grows in wet sphagnum ground.

In western North America the Candy Cap (Lactarius rubidus) fills a similar niche with a comparable sweet-aromatic scent, but it is more orange-rufous, larger and associated with oak and tanoak rather than spruce.