Russula ciliata

Overview

Russula ciliata is a wild brittlegill, a gilled mushroom of the genus Russula. The species was described by Buyck in 1987 in the Bulletin du Jardin botanique national de Belgique, and the Meise Botanic Garden inventory of edible fungi of tropical Africa carries it under that name. Its English name in the supplied record is African brittlegill.

Appearance

The cap is 35 to 50 mm across and its colour varies widely, from greenish and olive-yellow to greyish yellow or yellow-orange. The stipe is 20 to 40 mm long and 10 to 18 mm thick, white to faintly yellowish, becoming hollow and without a ring. The gills are white to cream and the spore print is white to creamy. The spores are ellipsoid, 7.5 to 9.7 by 6.1 to 7.6 micrometres, with an amyloid network and no clamp connections.

The EFTA page describes the odour as pleasant and the taste as mild.

Habitat and range

It is ectomycorrhizal and associated with trees of the Caesalpiniaceae legume family, growing in open forest, miombo and muhulu woodland. EFTA records it from Benin, Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Look-alikes

EFTA names Russula flavobrunnea as a closely similar species, fairly common in the same environments. The page also describes R. flavobrunnea as edible, so the look-alike does not settle the question for a cook.

How to recognise a brittlegill

A mushroom is a brittlegill, a Russula, only when several features line up. The cap is usually brightly coloured. The gills are brittle: they snap when you try to bend them, and the flesh breaks cleanly like chalk instead of tearing into fibres. The stem carries no ring and no cup or sack at its base, and there are no veil remnants on the cap. The gills are attached to the stem, and a spore print is white, cream or dark yellow.

Two checks separate Russula from its look-alikes. Break a gill or cut the flesh: a brittlegill gives no milky juice, while a milkcap (Lactarius or Lactifluus) weeps latex. Then look at the stem. A ring on the stem, a cup or a sack or bulb with torn remnants at its base, or flesh that tears in fibres points away from Russula and towards Amanita, a genus that includes the deadly death cap and many other poisonous species. A mushroom with a ring or a cup at the base is not a Russula, whatever colour its cap is.

Recognising the genus is much easier than naming the species. Cap colour varies widely inside one species, so experts rely on the colour of the spore print, the taste, colour changes in the flesh, how far the cap skin peels, chemical tests and the microscope. A collector who is sure of the genus but not of the species should treat the species as unidentified.

The taste test, and what it cannot tell you

Foragers have long sorted brittlegills by taste. Break off a small piece of cap flesh or gill, chew it for several seconds and spit it out without swallowing; the burn of an acrid species can take half a minute to build. Brittlegills that taste mild are the traditional edibles. Those that taste hot, peppery or acrid, and many bitter ones, are left alone because they irritate the stomach and bowel and can cause vomiting and diarrhoea.

The method works only inside the genus. Use it once the mushroom is positively a Russula, never to decide whether an unknown mushroom is safe: the deadliest mushrooms do not taste unpleasant, and a mild taste says nothing about an Amanita, a Cortinarius or any other family. Within Russula it is a screen for rejecting species, not proof of safety. Some mild species are poor eating, rare species are poorly documented, and a few brittlegills have been linked with poisoning. Cook what you eat, start with a small portion, and identify to species where you can. This record is not a field guide.

Edibility and preparation

EFTA includes the species in an edible-fungi inventory but gives no explicit rating, no preparation notes and no toxicity statement. The supplied record calls the entry an institutional edible-species record whose preparation, identity and current safety require separate validation. This page reports the listing and nothing beyond it.

Gather or eat no wild fungus on the strength of a catalogue listing, a description or a photograph. Identification needs a qualified expert, and the sources read here do not establish a safe preparation. Russula is a large genus, and a description or a photograph is not enough to separate its edible members from others.