Our Edible Toadstools and Mushrooms and How to Distinguish Them / A Selection of Thirty Native Food Varieties Easily Recognizable by their Marked Individualities, with Simple Rules for the Identification of Poisonous Species

by W. Hamilton Gibson

SUSPICIOUS BOLETI

Boletus felleus—B. alveolatus

Maligned species

A daring pioneer mycophagist

In [Plate 24] are shown two examples of the Boleti which have commonly been accounted poisonous—B. felleus and B. alveolatus—and, in the absence of absolutely satisfactory assurance to the contrary, it is safer from our present point of view to consider them still as suspicious and to give them a wide berth. There can be no doubt but that the popular condemnation of the Boleti has been altogether too sweeping. The gradual accession of many questionable species to the edible list of Messrs. McIlvaine and Palmer and other daring mycophagists is a sufficient attestation of this fact. Thus subtomentosus and cyanescens, already described, always heretofore branded as reprobates, are now redeemed from obloquy, and even the universal ill-repute of the B. satanas, with its pale pileus and blood-red pores, has not frightened the indefatigable Captain McIlvaine from a personal challenge and encounter with this lurid specimen, with the result that the formidable "Satanas" has proved anything but deserving of its name—not half so lurid as it has been painted; indeed, it has been even pronounced "the best of them all." Of course there's no telling to what extent the considerations of contrast, through surprise and the consequent demoralization on the contingents of the personal equation, may have influenced the captain's discrimination, but it certainly would appear, to put it negatively, that even the ill-favored world-renowned B. satanas has apparently been freed from aspersion as an enemy of mankind.

But it is well for the amateur to avoid these notorious species absolutely until their edibility becomes universally accepted by the "professionals."

The bitter Boletus

The Boletus felleus (Plate 24, fig. 1) is a very common species. The pinkish substance of this Boletus is so extremely bitter when raw as to make it sufficiently repellent as food. The color of its smooth cap varies from creamy yellow to reddish brown. Substance white in young specimens, flesh color or pinkish in older individuals. Tube surface white at first, becoming pinkish. Opening of tubes, angled. Stem usually more or less netted with raised lines towards cap. Spores pinkish or "flesh colored." Common in rich soil in woods.

PLATE XXIV
SUSPICIOUS BOLETI

Alveolate Boletus—Boletus alveolatus

Pileus: Smooth, polished; bright, deep crimson or maroon, occasionally mottled or marbled with yellowish; three to six inches in diameter.

Flesh: Firm and solid in substance; pale greenish or yellowish white, changing blue in fracture or where bruised.

Tubes: Tube-surface reaching the stem proper; undulate with uneven hollows; maroon, the tubes in section being yellow beyond their dark red mouths.

Spores: Yellowish brown.

Stem: Usually disproportionately long, covered with depressions or oblong pitted indentations, with intermediate coarse network of raised ridges; red and yellow.

Habitat: Woods; quite common.

Bitter Boletus—Boletus felleus

Pileus: At first firm in substance, becoming soft and cushion-like; smooth, without polish, varying in color from pale ochre to yellowish or reddish brown; diameter three to nine inches.

Flesh: White on immediate section, generally changing to slight pinkish or flesh color in fracture.

Tubes: Tube-surface rounded upward as it reaches stem; white at first, becoming dull pinkish with age, or upon being bruised.

Spores: Flesh colored or dull pink.

Stem: Usually quite stout, nearly as smooth as the cap, and somewhat lighter in color; more or less ridged with coarse reticulations, occasionally covered with them to its thickened base.

Taste: Bitter.

Habitat: Rich woods and copses, often about decaying trunks.

PLATE XXIV

Suspicious Boleti.

BOLETUS ALVEOLATUS.    B. FELLEUS.

The crimson Boletus

Boletus alveolatus.—Pileus smooth and polished, usually rich crimson or maroon, sometimes varied with paler yellowish tints. Substance very solid, changing to blue on fracture or bruise. Tube surface deep dull crimson or maroon, this color not extending the full length of the pores, which are yellow a short distance above their mouths. The stem is quite stout and tall for the size of the cap as compared with other Boleti. It is mottled in yellow and bright red or crimson, and conspicuously meshed with a network of firm ridges. The spores are yellowish brown. A conspicuous and easily identified species.