With a taste that is described variously as mild, nutty, fruity, or sweet, it is cooked by grilling, frying, sautéeing, or eaten raw.

Its presence in North America has not been clarified, due to confusion with the similar species Russula parvovirescens and R. crustosa.

R. virescens fruits singly or scattered on the ground in both deciduous and mixed forests, forming mycorrhizal associations with broadleaf trees such as oak, European beech, and aspen.

[2] The variety albidocitrina, defined by Claude Casimir Gillet in 1876,[1] is no longer considered to have independent taxonomic significance.

[8] According to Rolf Singer's 1986 classification of Russula, R. virescens is the type species of subsection Virescentinae in section Rigidae, a grouping of mushrooms characterized by a cap surface that breaks into patches of bran-like (furfuraceous) particles.

[14] Described by mushroom enthusiast Antonio Carluccio as "not exactly nice to look at", the cap is at first dome or barrel-shaped, becoming convex and flattened with age with a diameter of up to 15 cm (6 in).

[19] Like other mushrooms in the Russulales, the flesh is brittle, owing to the sphaerocyst cytoarchitecture—cylindrical cells that contrast with the typical fibrous, filamentous hyphae present in other orders of the basidiomycota.

[15] In an 1875 work on the uses of fungi, English mycologist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke remarked about the mushroom that "the peasants about Milan are in the habit of putting [it] over wood embers to toast, and eating [it] afterwards with a little salt.

"[29] The mushroom is often sold as a dried product in Asia;[30] in China, it can be found in roadside markets,[31] and used in traditional herbal medicines.

Mushrooms can be sautéed (the green color disappears with cooking), and young specimens that are prepared this way have a potato taste that pairs well with shallots.

When collecting R. virescens for consumption, caution is of vital importance to avoid confusion with the dangerously poisonous Amanita phalloides (better known as the death cap), a mushroom that can be most easily identified by its volva and ring.

[34] A lady amateur mycophagist of the writer's acquaintance, ... who is especially fond of the green Russula, is never at a loss for this especially prized tidbit as a reward for her daily stroll among the trees.

A visitor may often see upon her buffet a small glass dish filled with the mushrooms, nicely scraped and cut in pieces—an ever-present relish between meals.

[39] Preliminary investigations suggest that the fungus also associates with at least ten species of Dipterocarpaceae, an important tree family prevalent in the tropical lowland forests of Southeast Asia.

[42] The distribution of R. virescens in North America is subject to debate, where a number of similar species such as R. parvovirescens and R. crustosa are also recognized.

[23][33] One author even suggests that R. virescens "is strictly a European species",[33] citing Buyck and collaborators (2006), who say "the virescens-crustosa group is much more complex than suspected and embraces at least a dozen taxa in the eastern US".

[23] As in Europe, Russula virescens has a widespread distribution in Asia, having been recorded from India,[43] Malaysia,[44] Korea,[45] the Philippines,[46] Nepal,[47] China,[48] Thailand,[49] and Vietnam.

[57] Ribonucleases (or RNases) are enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis of ribonucleic acid (RNA), and collectively they play a critical role in many biological processes.

A RNase from R. virescens was shown to be biochemically unique amongst seven edible mushroom species in several ways: it has a co-specificity towards cleaving RNA at poly A and poly C, compared to the monospecific RNases of the others; it can be adsorbed on chromatography columns containing DEAE–cellulose as the adsorbent; it has a pH optimum of 4.5, lower than all other species; and, it has a "distinctly different" N-terminal amino acid sequence.