Curry Milkcap Identification Guide

The First Impression

Damp woodland on acid ground, late summer through autumn. Among moss, needle litter or leaf debris there is a small, dark, red-brown mushroom with a slightly matt cap and a slender stem, entirely unremarkable at a glance and easily written off as one of a hundred small brown mushrooms.

The species declares itself through the nose. Crush a cap between your fingers, or simply put two or three fruitbodies in a closed pot for ten minutes, and a warm, spicy, penetrating aroma develops which most people describe as fenugreek-like, exactly as the common name suggests. Drying intensifies it enormously, so a specimen left on a windowsill overnight becomes unmistakable. Aroma alone is not a proof, but it is the character that tells you to look harder.

Reading the Cap

Measure and shape it first. The cap is 2 to 5 cm across, occasionally to 7, convex at first, then flattening and usually developing a shallow central depression while retaining a small sharp point, a papilla, at the very centre. That combination of a slight funnel with a nipple in the middle is worth checking on several caps.

The surface is dry and matt to very finely velvety, never viscid, and it lacks the concentric bands seen in some relatives. Colour is dark red-brown: brick, liver-brown, chestnut or dark cinnamon. It is hygrophanous, so it dries paler from the centre outwards to a dull tan. The margin becomes wavy and slightly crenulate with age, sometimes faintly grooved.

Reading the Gills

Turn the cap over. The gills are adnate to slightly decurrent, crowded and rather narrow, with some forking near the stipe. Young gills are pale pinkish-buff and darken to cinnamon or reddish-ochre, so gill colour tracks maturity and should be judged on a middle-aged specimen.

Then run a fingernail sideways across them. In the milkcaps the gills are brittle and crumble rather than folding, because the flesh contains spherical cells. That brittleness, together with the latex described next, establishes the genus before you consider the species.

The Latex

This is the step that must be done properly, on a fresh young fruitbody. Take a clean razor blade and cut straight across the gills near the middle of the cap, then wait fifteen to twenty seconds and watch the cut edge with a lens.

Droplets appear, but sparingly, especially in dry weather. They are watery white, thin rather than creamy, and their behaviour is what counts: the latex does not change colour on exposure to air, and it does not stain the gill tissue yellow, brown or lilac. Smear a drop onto a white handkerchief and check it again after fifteen minutes; it stays as it was. Confirming an unchanging latex is one of the most information-dense observations available in this genus.

Stipe, Base and Flesh

The stipe is 2 to 6 cm tall and 4 to 10 mm thick, more or less equal or slightly tapered, dry and matt. It is the same red-brown as the cap or a shade darker, often with a slightly paler apex, and it is brittle enough to snap cleanly. It is stuffed when young and becomes hollow. At the very base there is usually a fine whitish mycelial felt binding moss stems, needles and soil grains. There is no ring and no volva.

Split the fruitbody lengthways. The flesh is thin and watery reddish-brown, and it does not change colour where cut.

Taking a Spore Print

Set a mature cap gills-down, ideally with half on white paper and half on dark, cover it, and leave it six to ten hours. The print here is pale cream to pale ochre. That intermediate tone is genuinely useful, so print the specimen against white in order to judge it, since a cream print on dark card looks white.

Microscopically the spores are broadly ellipsoid to nearly round, about 7 to 8.5 by 6 to 7 micrometres, and ornamented with ridges that form an incomplete network. The ornamentation stains blue-black in iodine, a standard genus confirmation.

Substrate, Season and Ecology

The species grows from soil, moss and litter, never from wood, although fruitbodies rising through a moss-covered rotten stump can be misleading; trace the stipe to its base before deciding.

It is ectomycorrhizal, forming sheathing partnerships with tree roots, and associates with both conifers and broadleaves, particularly spruce, pine, oak, beech and birch. It favours acid, often damp soils, and turns up along woodland rides, on heathy margins and among carpets of feather moss or haircap moss. Fruiting runs from midsummer to late autumn, usually in scattered troops rather than singly.

Separating the Look-alikes on Morphology

Lactarius subdulcis matches it for size and general colour but is paler and more orange- to red-brown, has an unpolished but not papillate cap, is strongly associated with beech, and lacks the strong aroma, smelling faint or slightly oily at most. Its latex is also white and unchanging, so scent and habitat carry the separation.

Lactarius rufus is considerably larger, 5 to 10 cm, a brighter brick to rusty red, with a persistent pointed umbo and a paler stipe, and it has no notable smell.

Lactarius quietus is larger and dull tan with faint concentric darker bands, has a distinctive oily smell, and grows strictly with oak.

Lactarius glyciosmus is grey-lilac to greyish buff, much paler, and smells strongly of coconut; it is a birch associate.

Lactarius helvus is the real trap for anyone relying on smell alone, because it too is strongly aromatic. It is far larger, 6 to 15 cm, pale buff-fawn rather than dark red-brown, has a scurfy felted cap surface, produces watery colourless latex, and grows in wet, boggy, often Sphagnum-rich ground.

Lactarius serifluus is brownish with watery, whey-like latex and a duller, more olive-brown cap.

Small brown mushrooms in other genera, such as Mycena and Psathyrella, produce no latex at all and their gills bend rather than crumble.

Working Checklist

• Small, dry, dark red-brown cap, 2 to 5 cm, often depressed with a central papilla
• Crowded, brittle, cinnamon gills, adnate to slightly decurrent
• Watery white latex, sparse, unchanging, not staining the gills
• Slender brittle stipe, cap-coloured, with white mycelial felt at the base
• Strong warm fenugreek-like aroma, hugely intensified on drying
• Pale cream to pale ochre spore print
• Acid soil, moss and litter, with conifers or broadleaves, summer to autumn