Chalciporus piperatoides

https://www.mushroomexpert.com/Chalciporus_piperatoides.html

Ecology: Mycorrhizal with hardwoods and conifers; growing alone, scattered, or gregariously; summer and fall (also over winter along the West Coast); possibly widely distributed, but more common in northern and montane areas.

Cap: 3-8 cm; convex or slightly conic, becoming broadly convex; sticky when fresh, but soon dry; bald or very finely velvety when young; shiny; dull red to reddish brown or dull pinkish tan, fading to tan.

Pore Surface: Dull brownish orange to dull reddish; bruising blue, then slowly resolving to dark reddish brown; 1-2 pores per mm near the margin and when young, becoming larger and irregular to angular near the stem and with age; tubes to 5 mm deep.

Stem: 4-8 cm long; 0.5-1.5 cm thick; more or less equal; dry; colored like the cap; bald; base with bright to dull yellow mycelium.

Flesh: Yellowish in the cap; brighter yellow in the stem; bluing erratically when sliced, or not bluing.

Odor and Taste: Odor not distinctive; taste strongly peppery or bitter.

Chemical Reactions: Ammonia reddish brown on cap surface; brownish on flesh. KOH black on cap surface; brown on flesh. Iron salts negative on cap surface; negative on flesh.

Spore Print: Olive.

Microscopic Features: Spores 6-8 x 2.5-3.5 ; smooth; subfusoid; yellowish in KOH. Hymenial cystidia fusoid to fusoid-ventricose; to about 75 x 12 . Trama of tubes faintly and erratically greenish-amyloid when dried specimens are studied. Pileipellis a tangled layer of cylindric elements 6-12 wide; terminal elements with rounded to subacute apices; hyaline to yellowish.

#mushrooms #fungi #mycology #shrooms #mushtodon #sporespondence #floraspondence