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Key Features
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- Cap covered with brown, reddish-brown, or dark brown fibers or scales.
- Odor spicy-fragrant (best detected by sniffing the gills), like cinnamon or Red Hots
- Gills white, typically notched where they join the stalk, not running down it.
- Veil present, covering the gills at first, then forming a prominent ring on stalk.
- Stalk white above ring, sheathed with brown to dark brown fibers or scales below ring.
- Base of stalk without a bulb or volva.
- Growing on ground.
Other Features: Medium-sized; veil rather thick; flesh very firm; taste often but not always bitter; spores white.
Where: On ground under northern conifers (especially spruce and fir); fairly common in Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, and the Southwest, but rather rare in the Pacific Northwest and California.
Edibility: Edible but often slightly bitter. When the bitterness is not pronounced it is as good as the white matsutake.
Note: This mushroom resembles the white matsutake except for color. It is also very close to the matsutake of Japan (T. matsutake), but the flavor of the Japanese mushroom is superior. One variety of T. caligatum with a fruity rather than spicy odor is common in Alaska.
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