The beech milkcap is a common mushroom under beech trees in Scotland, this one is from last September in the Assynt area. The cap is greyish (but quite variable in colour), and very slimy when wet, as seen in the cover image. The milk is white, drying light grey. Flesh is white. Spore print is light cream, spores sub-globous, with a network of loosely connected ridges.


cap from below next to a ruler

In the above image the grey colour of the dried milk is visible on the left cut across the gills, if you zoom in.

cross section

The cross section shows the white flesh.

spores under microscope

Spores at around 2000x magification, focused on the spore perimeter for measuring. This sample averaged 7.0 x 5.9 micron (Q 1.05 - 1.34).

spores under microscope, phase contrast lens

Spores at around 1300x magnification (100x lens) showing the network of interconnected ridges. This image is taken using a phase contrast lens, which is particularly good at visualising spore ornamentation.

(I am slowly working through a backlog of mushroom observations from the autumn. I was initially putting these on iNaturalist, but I am not convinced there is any real public benefit in doing that, so will start putting them on the blog instead; own your content and all that.)