Somebody landed on this blog today after entering the search term Lactarius thyinos into a search engine. As it happens this is something I’ve written about in the past. L. thyinos are a variety of milk cap mushrooms. I find them from time to time, usually when I’m not looking for them, and almost always around cedar trees. In fact they are the only edible mushroom I ever find around cedar trees.

They are beautiful orange mushrooms and when you break them, they exude an even brighter orange latex-like liquid. As a bonus, they’re really tasty. The last time I found them I was on a trail halfway down into a deep narrow canyon through which flows one of the loveliest brook trout streams you could imagine. It’s a stream that is loaded with small brook trout, but also holds some surprisingly big brookies as well as some very good brown trout, and as a bonus there are some large rainbow trout in there as well, which I believe must be escapees from the town mill pond above the canyon.