Summary:
Clade Russula core. Features include a viscid striate cap that is whitish with a slight grayish or purplish component, unchanging white flesh, cream to white gills, a white stem, a mild odor, a strongly peppery taste, and a white to sometimes pale yellow spore deposit.

Cap:
3.5-8.3cm across, broadly convex becoming flat and finally depressed with rounded or uplifted margin; pallid with a slight purplish component, more or less dingy or dull white, center may be grayish white overall with lighter patches; viscid, bald, drying polished and shining, margin tuberculate-striate, pellicle separable at margin, (Grund), 3.5-10.5cm across, convex to broadly convex to flat convex when young, deeply and broadly depressed when old, margin decurved [downcurved] when young, flat to irregularly uplifted to umbonate when mature; "white to dingy white to pale buff to pale gray", frequently with dull lavender to pale purple tones particularly on the margin, "usually slightly paler on the disc, not changing color when bruised"; viscid, bald, with shallow areolations near margin, obscurely striate to tuberculate-striate, (Thiers), Vancouver Island material all had purple or pinkish-grey caps, even old faded caps retaining some purplish-grey tints, (Roberts, C.)

Flesh:
0.3-1cm off the disc; white, unchanging when cut or bruised, (Grund), 0.5-1cm thick; white, unchanging when exposed, (Thiers)

Gills:
"adnate or slightly adnexed, moderately close, rarely forking", occasionally subgills interspersed; cream to almost white, (Grund), "adnate to adnexed, close to subdistant, forking absent to rare"; usually white, sometimes near cream when older, unchanging when bruised, (Thiers)

Stem:
3-7.5cm x 0.9-2.2cm, mostly equal to slightly expanded at base and immediately at top where gills attach; "white, not bruising but sometimes darkening slightly grayish upon handling"; moist, bald, longitudinally wrinkled, (Grund), 4-7cm x 1-3cm at top, equal to club-shaped, stuffed; white, unchanging when bruised; dry, bald, often longitudinally wrinkled, (Thiers)

Odor:
not distinctive or absent, (Grund), mild (Thiers)

Taste:
strongly peppery, (Grund), peppery to strongly peppery, (Thiers)

Microscopic spores:
spores 8-9.5(10) x 7-7.5(8) microns, round or nearly round, echinulate with conic protuberances 0.8-1.5 microns high, "some connected by thin lines forming an incomplete reticulum", ornamentation strongly amyloid; basidia mostly 4-spored, 38-48 x 10-12 microns, "subclavate to clavate, thin-walled, light brownish in KOH"; pleuropseudocystidia abundant, projecting 25-40 microns beyond basidioles, 60-108 x 8.4-12 microns, "mostly subcylindric to subclavate or sometimes subfusoid, apices rounded, mucronate to acuminate", "slightly browning in KOH, contents highly granular", (Grund), 6-9.2 x 6-7.5 microns, ovoid to somewhat elliptic to nearly round, "ornamentation composed mostly of scattered, moderately heavy warts with rare to absent heavy ridges or fine lines sometimes forming a very obscure partial reticulum", warts 0.5-1.0 microns high; hymenial cystidia scattered to abundant, projecting, sometimes only slightly, from the hymenium, 52-90 x 5-10 microns, "cylindric to fusoid to clavate with obtuse to acute apices, yellow to brownish in KOH, filled with amorphous contents", (Thiers), spores 6.8-10 (11) x 6.2-8.9 microns, ornamentation of conical warts, occasionally heavy, 0.8-1.4 microns or sometimes up to 2 microns high, "isolated or with mostly fine connectives not forming a reticulum or at most a partial one", Patterson-Woo B3-C3, (Roberts, C.)

Spore deposit:
white, Crawshay A, (Grund), white to pale yellow (Thiers), pale buff (Roberts, C.)

Notes:
Russula stuntzii was described from WA. There are collections from WA at the University of Washington. Roberts, C.(2) reports it from Vancouver Island in BC. There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia. There are sequenced Ben Woo collections from WA and OR. Thiers(3) included it for CA.

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