Russula lenkunya Grgur.

Common name: None.

Description: This species of Russula commonly has caps up to 10 cm in diameter, but larger caps are sometimes found. The surface is convex, smooth (except for the tubercular striate margins), dry and is deep wine-purple to reddish purple. The gills are adnate and white. The stems are usually 35 cm long and 0.51.5 cm thick and are cylindrical, dry, solid or a little hollow with age, smooth and variable in colour: purplish red to rosy pink tinted with faint violet or purple. The flesh is always very brittle and usually it snaps like a carrot when fresh.

The spores measure 712 × 69 µm, and are ellipsoid to subglobose, decorated with either warts or an incomplete network and colourless, but white or cream-coloured in spore prints. The warts stain blue in iodine solution when examined under the microscope.

Substrate: Russula lenkunya may be found solitary or gregarious and directly on soil among moss or litter in eucalypt forests or rainforests where there is eucalypt or scrub box invasion at the margins.

Distribution: This species is known from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

Notes: Russula lenkunya was originally known in most Australian literature as Russula mariae; however, the latter name is incorrect. It forms mycorrhizal associations with trees and shrubs especially eucalypts (Eucalyptus spp.). Other Australian tree species may also be suitable as mycorrhizal partners, e.g. Leptospermum (ti-trees) and Melaleuca (paperbarks). Nothofagus moorei and N. cunninghamii also form mycorrhizae with species of Russula, but it is uncertain if they include R. lenkunya.