Russula laurocerasi

Russula laurocerasi  common name "almond-scented Russula"

Russula laurocerasi  smells so sweet and looks so big and edible but tastes like a red hot pepper! I've seen these lots of times before but I did not think I would be able to key them so I never tried.   I have more confidence in my ability to key mushrooms now, so I took some home to key yesterday.   These came from private property.    I used the awesome matchmaker program at http://forestry-dev.org/biodiversity/matchmaker/index_e.html  to key these and got it right on the first try.  These came up as my number one match.   The downloadable program is the one to use.  I had trouble with the hard drive file so I downloaded the CD file and then it worked fine.  I really love this program!

These have ornamented spore so maybe I will take it into the lab look at the spores.  It also sound like this thing has HUGE  cystidia, all the more reason to do some microscopy with this specimen.