Types of saffron milk caps: pine, spruce, and the true one

Saffron milk caps are hard to miss: a bright orange cap with rings and orange milk that oozes out where it's broken — features no other mushrooms have. They're among the most valued mushrooms for salting. But “saffron milk cap” isn't one species, it's several similar ones, and it helps to know the differences.

Let's look at the main saffron milk cap species of Ukraine, where they grow and how they differ.

Saffron milk cap (pine)

The best known. The cap is bright orange or ginger with darker concentric zones and a sunken center. It grows in pine forests on sandy soils. The milk is orange and turns green in the air. The most valued for salting — firm and crunchy.

False saffron milk cap

It's tied to spruce. The cap is thinner and smaller than the pine one, orange-ginger with greenish blotches, and often turns green quickly when touched. The milk is orange too and turns green. Tasty, though more brittle than the pine one.

Lactarius salmonicolor and others

• Lactarius salmonicolor — with a delicate pinkish-orange color, found in damp conifer forests.
• All true saffron milk caps share orange milk that turns green, and concentric zones on the cap.

For more on when saffron milk caps appear and where to find them, see our separate article.

How to tell a saffron milk cap from false ones

The key sign of a true saffron milk cap is orange (not white) milk that turns green in the air. If the milk is white and acrid, it's a woolly milk cap or another milk cap, not a saffron milk cap. The saffron milk cap has no deadly poisonous look-alikes, but milk caps of a similar color can be bitter.

How saffron milk caps are cooked

Saffron milk caps are a salting classic; they're even salted raw (“dry” salting), and that's how they taste best. They're also fried and pickled. They're the traditional partner of milk caps in winter preserves.

Sources

• “Identification Guide to the Fungi of Ukraine” (Kyiv, Naukova Dumka publishing house).
• Lactarius deliciosus in GBIF, the global biodiversity database.
• Lactarius deliciosus, Lactarius deterrimus in MycoBank, the international fungal nomenclature database.
• Lactarius deliciosus on Wikipedia.