Summary:
Features include 1) a viscid cap that has concentric zones of bright yellow and apricot orange, 2) white unchanging milk that may cause gray or olivaceous changes in drying, 3) white to pale fawn or dingy yellow gills that stain dirty orange or dark orange brown when old or bruised, 4) a whitish stem with a white bloom, the stem bruising dingy ocher at the base, 5) a peppery taste, 6) a cinnamon-buff spore deposit, and 7) elliptic spores with amyloid ornamentation. |Hesler(4) say it is common in the Pacific Northwest. |Hesler(4) give a long explanation of why the name L. zonarioides was a new one applied by Kuhner and Romagnesi to a species with isolated warts on the spores, and should not be applied to a species with ridged spores. In naming it Kuhner and Romagnesi supplied a description with ridged spores but the description is irrelevant since they were not describing it as a new species. This species name continues to be used for a species with ridged spores (e.g. Breitenbach(6)), but the name L. zonarioides is misapplied to the ridged spored species.

Cap:
6-12cm across, "broadly convex with a depressed cap center and a wavy, incurved margin that becomes uplifted, making the cap funnel-shaped"; bright yellow and apricot orange with concentric bands of color; sticky [viscid], smooth, (Phillips), 6-12cm across, convex with depressed disc, margin remaining decurved [downcurved] or becoming uplifted so that cap funnel-shaped; zoned, orange but with lighter and richer zones ("apricot-orange" to "zinc-orange" and alternating "light ochraceous-buff"); bald including the margin, viscid, (Hesler)

Flesh:
thin, fairly fragile; white, (Phillips), thin, moderately fragile; white, (Hesler), MILK white unchanging, but staining gills dark orange or dark orange-brown, (Phillips), white, unchanging (may stain gray or olivaceous on drying) but gills staining orange to orange-brown where bruised, (Hesler)

Gills:
"adnate, close to subdistant, narrow; white to pale fawn or dingy yellow, bruising dirty orange or dark orange-brown", (Phillips), adnate, close to subdistant, narrow, interveined; white becoming "light buff" or a more dingy yellow, staining dingy orange or orange-brown when old or where bruised; edges even, (Hesler)

Stem:
4-6cm x 1.5-2.5cm, narrowing slightly toward the base; "whitish with a white bloom", bruising dingy ocher at base, (Phillips), 4-6cm x 1.5-2(3)cm, slightly narrowing toward base or nearly equal; whitish, at first with white bloom, becoming dingy ochraceous at base where handled, (Hesler), usually whitish at first, becoming ochraceous when old, (Trudell)

Veil:
[none]

Taste:
peppery [milk at least] (Hesler), milk extremely peppery (Trudell)

Microscopic spores:
spores 8-11 x 7.5-9 microns, amyloid, "ornamented with short or long ridges, often branched, forming a broken or complete reticulum, prominences 0.5-1.5 microns high," (Phillips), spores (7)8-11(13) x 7.5-9(11) microns, broadly elliptic, [amyloid] ornamentation of short to long ridges, often branched and forming +/- of a complete to a broken reticulum, more rarely short ridges and isolated warts for the most part, prominences 0.5-1.5 microns high; basidia 4-spored, (or 2-spored intermixed), 45-52 x 10-12 microns; pleurocystidia: macrocystidia not distinct from pseudocystidia, often abundant, 30-52 x 3-5 microns, non-projecting, filiform to aciculate, content homogeneous or +/- refractive and irregular; cheilocystidia 22-30 x 3-5 microns, similar to pleurocystidia; cap cuticle an ixocutis of tubular, septate, thin-walled, colorless hyphae 3-6 microns wide in a thick zone of slime, no incrustations observed, (Hesler)

Spore deposit:
"cinnamon-buff" (a pale dingy tan) (Hesler)

Notes:
Material was cited from WA, OR, ID, CO, and WY, (Hesler(4)). There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia. There are collections from AK, WA, OR, ID, and WY at the University of Washington.

EDIBILITY

no (Phillips)