Summary:
Features include a whitish to tan or brown or violet-gray cap that is bumpy and/or pitted, cap flesh with blue lines, stem flesh blue to purple black, teeth that are whitish to grayish brown, a stem that is grayish blue to bluish black and usually has a swollen rooting base, and a fragrant anise or peppermint odor. It is especially common in the Rocky Mountains.

Chemical Reactions:
velvety layer on stem stains blue-green with KOH (McKnight), KOH stained the violet tomentum on stem a blue-green and a trace of that shade appeared when colored flesh tested, (Harrison)

Odor:
"often strongly fragrant (like anise or peppermint)", sometimes absent (Arora), pleasantly anise-like or coumarin-like, pronounced, (Breitenbach), "variable in intensity, faint when first collected but after a few hours usually distinctly aromatic as of wintergreen or peppermint and persisting for many years", (Coker), coumarin or anisealdehyde (Hall), strong, sweet or sickly, (Phillips), strongly fragrant (sickening-sweetish), (Harrison)

Taste:
mild to somewhat bitter, (Breitenbach), none (Coker), mild to slightly cinnamon-like (Phillips), mild or slightly cinnamon-like (Harrison)

Microscopic:
spores 4-6 x 3-4 microns, elliptic to nearly round, prominently warted, (Arora), 3.5-5 x 2-3.5 microns, irregularly polygonal with indistinct tubercles, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 18-28 x 3-4 microns, slenderly clavate, with basal clamp connection; cystidia not seen; hyphae monomitic, hyphae in subhymenium and cap trama 2.5-5 microns wide, branched; septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach), 3.8-5 x 3-3.7(4.2) microns, nearly round to elongated, irregularly and bluntly tuberculate; basidia 4-spored, 4.8-5.5 microns wide; hyphae of context pale, thin-walled, intricately and rather loosely interwoven in upper part, more nearly parallel in firmer part, "occasionally branched and septate, with conspicuous clamp connections", (Coker), spores 4.5-6 x 3.0-4.0 microns, (Hall), in water strands of dark blue hyphae present in context, these hyphae turning greenish in KOH, and then slowly fading, and in Melzer''s reagent the hyphae are incrusted with very fine granular material that gives them an apparent amyloid appearance, hyphae in teeth 3-4 microns wide, parallel, clamped, and with fine incrusting apparent amyloid granules, (Harrison)

Spore Deposit:
brown (Arora), vinaceous brown (Harrison)

Notes:
The distribution includes NM to BC in the west, along the Appalachians from NC into Canada in the east, and reportedly also MI, (Harrison). It is also reported from WA (Hall), ID and NM, (Arora), CA (Desjardin), and NS, PQ, CO, ME, NC, and WY, (Coker). The University of Washington has collections from WA, OR, ID, and AK.

EDIBILITY

unknown, too fibrous, (Arora)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Hydnellum rickeri Banker