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Recent Insights in the Phylogeny, Species Diversity, and Culinary Uses of Milkcap Genera Lactarius and Lactifluus

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Mushrooms, Humans and Nature in a Changing World

Abstract

Milkcaps form a diverse group of widely consumed ectomycorrhizal fungi. Despite their popularity and ubiquity, large gaps still exist in our knowledge of the milkcap genera. This paper summarizes our current state of knowledge of both Lactarius and Lactifluus. Lacunas in our knowledge are indicated, and an overview of their culinary uses is given.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These genera are almost entirely agaricoid (pileate-stipitate with lamellae), but Russula and Lactarius include some angiocarpic representatives, and Lactifluus includes species with a pleurotoid morphology.

  2. 2.

    We use L. as the abbreviation of Lactarius and Lf. to abbreviate Lactifluus.

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Nuytinck, J. et al. (2020). Recent Insights in the Phylogeny, Species Diversity, and Culinary Uses of Milkcap Genera Lactarius and Lactifluus. In: Pérez-Moreno, J., Guerin-Laguette, A., Flores Arzú, R., Yu, FQ. (eds) Mushrooms, Humans and Nature in a Changing World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37378-8_9

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