Woolly milk capLactarius torminosus

Yes, after mandatory processing: boil for 15-20 minutes and discard the water, then salt or pickle for 40 days. Without processing, the raw mushroom is very pungent and can cause gastroenteritis — nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea.

Better not. The Woolly milk cap is made for salting — that's how it tastes good. Simply boiled or fried, it stays bitter with an off taste, and the risk of gastroenteritis isn't fully eliminated. The classic way is salted and properly cured.

Only near birches. It's an obligate mycorrhizal partner of birch. It grows in birch groves, mixed forests with birch and along forest edges. It loves damp spots, mossy “carpets” and clearings with young saplings.

Polissia and the Forest-Steppe are its main zones. The richest harvests are in the Chernihiv, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Volyn and Rivne regions. In the steppe and Crimea it's rare, found only in planted birch stands.

August–October. Peak fruiting is from late August to mid-September, especially after rain. In a warm, long autumn it can keep fruiting until the first serious frosts.

The odd one turns up in late July, but the Woolly milk cap really gets going in August. If you see something similar in a birch wood in July, take a closer look — it may be another pink milk cap (Lactarius).

With the Saffron milk cap (Lactarius deliciosus) — it also has concentric zones, but its milk is orange (not white) and its taste isn't acrid. The milk is the most important clue: white and acrid = Woolly milk cap, orange and mild = Saffron milk cap. Plus, the Saffron milk cap grows under pines, the Woolly milk cap under birches.

The Woolly milk cap is pinkish-red with distinct zones. The Bearded milk cap (L. pubescens) is white or creamy-white, without pronounced zones, with a softer tint. Both grow under birches, both are conditionally edible, both are salted — in the kitchen they're almost interchangeable.