Summary:
Features include 1) a pale yellow, slimy-viscid cap, 2) copious white milk that stains gills and flesh purple, 3) adnate to decurrent, crowded, pale yellow gills, 4) a cap-colored stem that is slimy-viscid when fresh, 5) a yellowish pallid spore deposit, and 6) nearly round spores with amyloid warts and ridges. It is rare in the Pacific Northwest.

Cap:
3-8cm across, convex to convex-depressed, when old shallowly funnel-shaped, margin incurved; evenly pale yellow overall (near "baryta yellow"), unzoned or rarely subzonate [slightly zoned]; bald, slimy-viscid, (Hesler), 3-6cm across, pale yellow, azonate; viscid, bald, (Methven)

Flesh:
thin, brittle, pallid, (Hesler), whitish, staining purplish, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), up to 1cm thick at disc, pale yellow, slowly staining lilac to violet on exposure, (Methven), MILK white, staining gills lilac or at times gills margined lilac when old, (Hesler), white, copious, slowly colors gills and flesh purple when injured, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), white, unchanging, staining the flesh and gills lilac to violet, (Methven)

Gills:
decurrent, crowded, narrow; pale yellow (colored about as cap when old), at times with lilac margins when old, (Hesler), adnate to subdecurrent, crowded, narrow, forked near stem; pale yellow, "staining lilac to violet where cut", (Methven)

Stem:
3-6cm x 1-1.5cm, soon hollow; colored as cap; slimy-viscid when fresh, often beaded with drops over top area, (Hesler), 3-5cm x 0.8-1.2cm, equal, round in cross-section; pale yellow; viscid, bald, not scrobiculate (Methven)

Odor:
none (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), not distinctive (Methven)

Taste:
bitterish then slowly slightly peppery, (Hesler), slowly peppery (Methven)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-9(10) x 7-8 microns, (in Washington specimen 8-10(12) x 7-8.5 microns but 2-spored basidia suspected of producing larger spores), nearly round to elliptic, [presumably amyloid] reticulum of broad ridges widely spaced, branching, some narrow ridges and some isolated small warts, but no reticulum or rarely a broken reticulum, prominences +/- 0.5-1.5 microns high; basidia 4-spored, 35-40 x 8-11 microns, clavate; pleurocystidia: macrocystidia 52-90 x 9-14 microns, "fusoid to ventricose at times with constrictions near apex, tapered to a neck and pointed apex, some almost mucronate-capitate", content spangled (as revived), walls thin and colorless, cheilocystidia similar to pleurocystidia, pseudocystidia rare to apparently absent in some collections, filamentose, embedded in the hymenium, (Hesler), spores 7.5-9 x 6.5-7.5 microns, broadly elliptic, amyloid ornamentation a broken to partial reticulum 0.5-1.0 microns high; basidia 35-45 x 6-8 microns; cheilocystidia 35-65 x 6-8 microns, fusoid, with one or more subapical constrictions; cap cuticle a thin ixocutis, stem cuticle a thin ixocutis, (Methven)

Spore deposit:
yellowish pallid ("pale pinkish buff"), (Hesler), white to pale yellow (Methven)

Notes:
Material was cited from WA, ON, QC, ME, MI, NY, and VT, (Hesler(4)). It has been found in CA but is rare, (Methven). A collection from BC is deposited at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

poisonous (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)