Pileus is firm, convex becoming centrally depressed or somewhat funnel-form, viscid, even on the thin margin, reddish-purple, often variegated with green, pea-green sometimes varied with purple, flesh white, taste acrid or tardily acrid.
The gills are thin, narrow, close, often forked, tapering toward each end, adnate or slightly decurrent, white.
The stem is equal or nearly so, solid, sometimes cavernous, white. The spores are white, subglobose, .0003 to .0004 of an inch long, .0003 broad. Peck, Rep. State Bot., 1905.
This plant grows in open beech woods, rather damp, and appears in July and August. The caps are often dark purple, often tinged with red, and sometimes the caps contains shades of green. I found the plants plentifully in Woodland Park, near Newtonville, Ohio, in July, 1907. We ate them on several occasions and found them very good. The greenish margin and purplish center will mark the plant.
Russula integra. Fr.
The Entire Russula. Edible.
Integra, whole or entire. The pileus is three or four inches in diameter, fleshy; typically red, but changing color; expanded, depressed, with a viscid cuticle, growing pale. Margin thin, furrowed and tuberculate. Flesh white, sometimes yellowish above.
The stem is at first short and conical, then club-shaped or ventricose, sometimes three inches long and up to one inch thick; spongy, stuffed, commonly striate; even, and shining white.
The gills are somewhat free, very broad, sometimes three-fourths of an inch; equal or bifid at the stem, rather distant and connected by veins; pallid or white, at length light yellow, being powdered yellow with the spores.
Although the taste is mild it is often astringent. One of the most changeable of all species, especially in the color of the pileus, which, though typically red, is often found inclining to azure-blue, bay-brown, olivaceous, etc. It occasionally happens that the gills are sterile and remain white. Fries.