Lactarius Piperatus - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The species was one of the many species named by Linnaeus who officially described it in Volume Two of his Species Plantarum in 1753 as Agaricus piperatus, the specific epithet deriving from the Latin adjective piperatus meaning "peppery".

For many years, Tyrolian naturalist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli had been considered the author of the first description, however a recent revision of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature in 1987 changed the rules regarding the starting date and primary work for names of fungi. Previously, the starting date had been set as January 1, 1821, the date of the works of the 'father of mycology', Swedish naturalist Elias Magnus Fries, but now names can be considered valid as far back as May 1, 1753, the date of publication of Linnaeus' seminal work.

It is currently the type species of the genus Lactarius, however in the complex relationship between Lactarius and Russula it is somewhat isolated from many other milk-cap species as it is in fact more closely related to many species of Russula than to most other milk-caps, and there has been discussion for the type to be redesignated in the likely break-up of the milk-cap genus.

It is commonly known as the peppery milk cap, pepper milkcap, peppery Lactarius, peppery milk mushroom, white peppery milk-cap, or other similar names. Similarly, in German it is known as the Pfeffer-milchling.