Summary:
Also listed in Truffles etc. category. Features include 1) a viscid cap with variable color: pale olive yellow, pale olive, pink, lilac, lilac-purple, purplish red, blue, or even whitish, or often mixtures of these, 2) a spore mass consisting irregular or distorted gills that are whitish at first but become ochraceous, 3) a stout, equal, brittle stem, 4) a mild odor and taste, 5) growth under conifers (buried or above ground), 6) nearly round spores with amyloid ridges and warts forming at most a broken reticulum, 7) basidia that are mostly 4-spored, rarely 1-spored, 2-spored, or 3-spored, 8) hymenial pseudocystidia, and 9) a cap cuticle that is at first a palisade of pseudocystidia, these becoming decumbent and tangled when old. Russula subloculata is commoner in North America than any of the species of Macowanites (Smith), from which genus it was moved in 2002.

Cap:
1-5cm across, "convex or irregularly lobed but often expanding" when old to flat or even centrally depressed, margin not typically joined to stem but often touching it when young; "color variable: lilac, purplish, vinaceous, olive, blue, yellow, or even whitish, or often mixtures thereof"; "viscid when wet, smooth or often breaking up into scales (especially at center)", (Arora), 1-5cm across, hemispheric or convex-flattened to irregular, more rarely almost flat from the start, eventually often expanding to flat with decurved [downcurved] margin, often eccentric, margin acute or sometimes blunt; color variable, pale olive-yellow, pale olive, pink, lilac, lilac-purple, purplish red, blue, sometimes with one color and other times showing various colors in a single group of fruitbodies, often with mixed colors in a single cap, whitish at times when covered by duff; bald, viscid at first, smooth, soon cracking into large flakes (at times so deeply as to expose the spore mass), (Singer), "yellow, olive vinaceous, purplish, or lilac in varying proportions", (Smith)

Flesh:
brittle, crisp; white, (Arora), thin at margin, becoming thicker toward disc where it is 0.1-0.4cm thick, "moderately firm at first, becoming very fragile", (Singer)

Gills:
spore mass "consisting of irregular or distorted, often veined or even chambered gills", usually attached to stem; whitish at first but soon becoming ocher to dull yellow-orange, (Arora), thickness variable, very broad at the cap margin, "or evenly narrow to the columella, or strongly ventricose and then deeply sinuate", or concave below and then adnate to subdecurrent; very fragile, "apparently always at least partly exposed", basically sublamellate [somewhat gill-like] and attached to top of stem-columella, "but very convolute and intervenose", almost alveolate in many fruitbodies, and often some bands of the spore mass extending from the margin of the cap to the stem-columella and decurrent there, "lamellar plates radiating but not regularly so", often bent or forking at various levels and not vertically oriented, "forming some completely closed winding chambers and a majority of broad chambers open toward the lower surface"; at first white, soon more or less deeply ochraceous ("ochraceous buff" Ridgway color) from spores, (Singer), white at first but soon pale to rich ochraceous, (Smith)

Stem:
1-3cm x 0.3-1.5cm, "more or less equal, firm, brittle", percurrent [going through spore mass]; white; smooth, (Arora), 1-3cm x 0.4-1.2cm, usually shorter than the width of the fruitbody, equal or nearly so, solid, soon becoming stuffed and finally partly hollow, percurrent to the thickest part of the peridium [cap]; white; bald, uneven; no basal mycelial tomentum, (Singer)

Odor:
none (Singer)

Taste:
mild (Singer)

Microscopic spores:
spores 8.5-13.5 x 8-12 microns, elliptic to round, amyloid warts and ridges, (Arora), spores 8.7-13.2 x 8.2-11.8 microns, short-elliptic to nearly round, strongly amyloid ornamentation "of warts and short spines connected into (often straight) chains or lines by a sometimes interrupted network of fine lines and occasional short ridges", "projecting 0.5-0.8 microns or rarely up to 1.2 microns", spores distinctly yellowish, "sterigmal appendage eccentrically to subcentrally attached and almost oblique, very rarely almost straight", "plage area with a dark amyloid area of amorphous material which extends to the sterigmal appendage and forms a thin short jacket around its base or up to one fourth to one third the distance toward its apex"; hymenium continuous, basidia mostly 4-spored, rarely 1-spored, 2-spored, or 3-spored, 23-46 x 7-13.5 microns, mostly 23-38 x 10-13 microns, clavate, colorless, sterigmata straight to curved and usually conic; pseudoparaphyses about 22 x 18 microns, thin-walled; pseudocystidia numerous in young specimens (but more scattered when mature), 40-90 x 7-11.5 microns, "ventricose, broadest in the lower, central, or upper third, or rarely ampullaceous with obtusely rounded or more rarely acute attenuated tip, originating in the lower portion of the subhymenium or the outer portion of the mediostratum", content yellow in KOH "and visible as granular to banded loosely distributed material"; subhymenium "well developed, of small cellular or somewhat irregular elements", colorless, "intermixed with hyphous cystidial pedicels" [hyphous presumably meaning hypha-like], hymenopodium poorly differentiated, mostly inconspicuous and sometimes absent; tramal mediostratum "varying from regular to obscurely bilateral" (toward subhymenium often diverging slightly), its elements mostly very strongly inflated, or typically heteromerous [with nests of sphaerocysts among filamentose hyphae]; peridial trama and that of stem and columella typically heteromerous; beneath the peridial epicutis there is a hypodermium similar to that of other Russulas, "consisting of repent filamentous hyphae but differing in containing scattered sphaerocysts"; peridial epicutis "at first consisting of strongly projecting pseudocystidia arranged in a palisade, the elements gradually becoming more decumbent and tangled, subgelatinous as revived in KOH", many primordial hyphae and ordinary filamentous hyphae also present in older fruitbodies (these often dominant), dermatopseudocystidia 25-85 x 4-8 microns, cylindric to clavate, some colorless fusoid dermatocystidia without distinctive content or incrustation also present; hyphae in all tissues inamyloid; clamp connections absent from all tissue, (Singer)

Spore deposit:
not obtainable

Notes:
It has been found in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains, (Smith). Specifically it has been recorded for ID (Singer) and CA (Thiers(4)). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia, collections from WA, AK, and CA at the University of Washington, collections from OR and MT at Oregon State University, and collections from ID at New York Botanical Garden and the College of Idaho (all as Macowanites americanus).

EDIBILITY

said to be edible, but be sure of identification, (Arora)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Macowanites americanus Singer & A.H. Sm.
Oligoporus sericeomollis (Romell) Pouzar
Polyporus sericeomollis Romell