Summary:
Russula granulata should be verified for the Pacific Northwest by DNA evidence. It is characterized by 1) medium size, 2) a relatively squat stature, 3) a viscid yellowish brown to tawny-brown cap with crustose patches forming over the disc as the outer cuticle fragments (furfuraceous-granular all over or in part), 4) a yellowish white stem that stains brownish or grayish, 5) a variable odor and taste, 6) a pale orange-yellow spore deposit, and 7) spores ornamented with mostly isolated, obtuse to conical warts.

Cap:
4-7(10.5)cm across, nearly spherical then deeply cushion-shaped with margin curved in and disc flattened or slightly depressed, expanding to convex or flat-convex with depressed center, eventually irregularly depressed or somewhat funnel-shaped; when young, moderate brown, grayish brown, yellowish brown, or yellowish brown centrally and lighter yellowish brown to yellow marginally, when mature retaining these colors or becoming lighter centrally, sometimes blotched with dark grayish red, when moribund dark grayish brown; viscid and shiny when wet, less so when dry, radially streaked outward from disc, scurfy, the small crust-like patches usually more concentrated on central cap, sometimes disappearing completely on margin, occasionally dark reddish brown at first on the central part, otherwise colored as or lighter than surface, cuticle separable for 1/3 to 2/3 of radius, prominently tuberculate-striate to 0.6-1.4(2)cm from edge, (Shaffer), 3-7.5cm across, convex, soon with depressed center, eventually with flat or uplifted margin; "chamois" or "honey yellow" or darker, reaching "tawny olive" on the disc, generally much in the colors of R. foetens; "very viscid to subviscid, the surface sometimes characteristically minutely furfuraceous-granulate all over or in part or at least concolorously punctate with innate (confluent with cuticle), not separable granose elevations [presumably resembling coarse grains] which are rather hard, denser toward the middle", long pectinate margin, often with a rugose [wrinkled] continuation of the marginal striation toward the center, cap skin somewhat separable, (Singer)

Flesh:
0.2-0.3cm at midradius, hard-brittle to firm-brittle; tinged cap color just under surface, otherwise yellowish white to pale yellow, becoming grayish when old, moderate yellowish brown around larval channels, (Shaffer), white or whitish, colored as cap near surface, (Singer)

Gills:
adnexed, adnate, or subdecurrent, close to subdistant, 0.4-0.5(0.9)cm broad, acute to subacute near margin, equal, or unequal with the subgills rare to occasional and of various lengths, gills fragile-brittle, often forking at or near stem and occasionally outward, interveined; "yellowish white when young, becoming pale yellow or pale orange yellow, sometimes tinged gray, at times spotted-stained grayish yellow or moderate to dark yellowish brown, when moribund dark grayish brown"; edges entire, (Shaffer), attenuated but adnate, some forked, with or without anastomosing or crisp decurrent lines on top of stem, white then "cream color", "often indistinctly staining brown on injury, spotted with reddish or concolorous specks on edge in age", (Singer)

Stem:
3-6(8.5)cm x 1-1.8(2.6)cm, equal, subfusiform [somewhat spindle-shaped], or widening or narrowing downward, stuffed but soon cavernous or hollow; "yellowish white to pale orange yellow, sometimes with moderate reddish brown basal areas, becoming stained, especially basally, dark grayish yellow, light grayish brown, moderate to dark yellowish brown, or light to dark brown"; dry, dull, longitudinally wrinkled, pulverulent [powdery] at top, elsewhere bald, (Shaffer), 2-6cm x 1-2cm, equal or narrowing or widening downward or wider in middle, at first firm, later spongy to stuffed and hollow; white with partly dirty or pale brownish to fulvous brown lower part; with scales near base, often (especially in dry places) with cinnabarinous tone at base, (Singer)

Odor:
"slightly fetid and also having a cocoa-like component", (Shaffer), variable, sometimes only with the oily component of R. foetens, but sometimes with distinct fruity odor of its own, (Singer)

Taste:
cuticle spermatic-peppery or radish-peppery, flesh with a slight spermatic or peppery taste that soon fades, gills when young with moderately oily-peppery taste that may soon fade, the taste sometimes nondescript at maturity, (Shaffer), disagreeable to slightly bitter and fetid and at the same time slowly very slightly to strongly burning peppery, (Singer)

Microscopic spores:
spores 5.7-8 x 4.4-6.3 microns, usually broadly elliptic or broadly obovate, rarely nearly round, or in some fruiting bodies occasionally pip-shaped to somewhat kidney-shaped, ornamentation of cylindric to bluntly conic warts up to 0.3-1.0 microns high, "on some spores the warts all isolated or at most partly clustered or aligned, on others with a variable number of connectives which may be attached to only one wart"; occasionally forming a partial reticulum in some fruitbodies, but never a complete reticulum; basidia 4-spored, 32-57 x 5.0-11.3 microns, clavate to clavate-fusiform; hymenial pseudocystidia abundant, 32-85 x 5.0-12.4 microns, "subcylindric, clavate, or fusiform", and "broadly rounded, subacute, capitate, short-appendiculate, or submoniliform apically", SV+, projecting up to 20 microns beyond the basidioles, or on the gill edges and at the tops and between the gills projecting up to 40 microns; cap epicutis 40-110 microns thick (subcutis 170-400 microns thick), discontinuous, of non-gelatinous, colorless or yellowish brown connective hyphal ends 2.3-5.7 microns wide whose cells are often short (7-17 microns long), but whose apical cells may be cystidia that are up to 45 microns long, "fusiform or lanceolate, often capitellate or short-appendiculate, and sometimes with SV- to weakly SV+, refractive contents", "with the hyphal ends decumbent to erect, embedded in or projecting through the gelatinous matrix", and scattered or aggregated in trichodermial patches that are the macroscopically visible scurf of the cap, (Shaffer), spores 7.6-8.8 x 6.6-7.2 microns, (Singer), cap cuticle an ixotrichodermium, pileocystidia absent, (Thiers)

Spore deposit:
pale orange yellow, slightly lighter than Romagnesi IIc, (Shaffer), Crawshay D, tone almost of E but distinctly paler, considerably darker than R. foetens, (Singer)

Notes:
Kauffman reported it from OR. It was reported from Vancouver Island in BC (Roberts, C.). Shaffer examined collections from QC, MI, NY, and TN. Bills examined collections from NY, TN, VA, and WV, and says it is widely distributed in southeastern Canada and the northeastern US. Singer adds VT, MA, and PA to the distribution. Thiers included it for CA on the basis of Burlingham''s report.

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