Lactarius
| Lactarius | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Lactarius vietus | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Basidiomycota |
| Class: | Agaricomycetes |
| Order: | Russulales |
| Family: | Russulaceae |
| Genus: |
Lactarius Pers. (1797) |
| Diversity | |
| c. 450 species | |
| Synonyms | |
Lactarius is a genus of mushroom-producing, ectomycorrhizal fungi, containing several edible species. The species of the genus, commonly known as milk-caps, are characterized by the milky fluid ("latex") they exude when cut or damaged. Like the closely related genus Russula, their flesh has a distinctive brittle consistency. It is a large genus with roughly 450 known species, mainly distributed in the Northern hemisphere. Recently, the genus Lactifluus has been separated from Lactarius based on molecular phylogenetic evidence.
The genus Lactarius was described by Christian Hendrik Persoon in 1797 with L. piperatus as the original type species. In 2011, L. torminosus was accepted as the new type of the genus after the splitting-off of Lactifluus as separate genus.
The name "Lactarius" is derived from the Latin , "milk".
Lactarius
Molecular phylogenetics uncovered that, while macromorphologically well-defined, milk-caps were in fact a paraphyletic genus; as a consequence, the genera Lactifluus was split from Lactarius, and the species L. furcatus was moved to the new genus Multifurca, together with some former Russula species.Multifurca also represents the likely sister group of Lactarius (see phylogeny, right). In the course of these taxonomical rearrangements, the name Lactarius was conserved for the genus with the new type species Lactarius torminosus; this way, the name Lactarius could be retained for the bigger genus with many well-known temperate species, while the name Lactifluus has to be applied only to a smaller number of species, containing mainly tropical, but also some temperate milk-caps such as Lactifluus volemus and Lf. vellereus.
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