In consistency Boletinus is of the best, being rather like that of marshmallows, and the same as Boletus subaureus. The flavor is mild and pleasant.
Professor Peck mentions that the smell of B. porosus is sometimes unpleasant. I have been fortunate in not having had this experience.
B. ca´vipes Kalchb. Pileus broadly convex, rather tough, flexible, soft, subumbonate, fibrillose-scaly, tawny-brown, sometimes tinged with reddish or purplish. Flesh yellowish. Tubes slightly decurrent, at first pale-yellow, then darker and tinged with green, becoming dingy-ochraceous with age. Stem equal or slightly tapering upward, somewhat fibrillose or floccose, slightly ringed, hollow, tawny-brown or yellowish-brown, yellowish at the top and marked by the decurrent dissepiments of the tubes, white within. Veil whitish, partly adhering to the margin of the pileus, soon disappearing. Spores 8–10×4µ.
Pileus 1.5–4 in. broad. Stem 1.5–3 in. long, 3–6 lines thick. Swamps and damp mossy ground under or near tamarack trees. New York, Peck; New England, Frost.
The pileus is clothed with a fibrillose tomentum which becomes more or less united into floccose tufts or scales. The umbo is not always present and is generally small. The young stem may sometimes be stuffed, but, if so, it soon becomes hollow, though the cavity is irregular. The freshly shed spores have a greenish-yellow or olivaceous hue, but in time they assume a pale or yellowish-ochraceous hue. This species is apparently northern in its range. It loves cold sphagnous swamps in mountainous regions. Peck, Boleti of the U.S.
West Virginia mountains under spruce trees. Haddonfield, N.J., among scrub pines. Mt. Gretna, Pa., among pines.
It is of excellent consistency and of mild pleasant flavor. It is at its best in patties, croquettes and escallops.
B. appendicula´tus Pk. Pileus fleshy, convex, glabrous, ochraceous-yellow, the margin appendiculate with an incurved membranous veil. Flesh pale-yellow, unchangeable. Tubes rather small, yellow, their mouths angular, unequal, becoming darker or brownish where wounded. Stem solid, slightly thickened at the base, yellow. Spores pale-yellow, oblong, 10–12×4µ. Pileus 4–8 in. broad. Stem 2–3 in. long, 4–6 lines thick.
Under or near fir trees. Washington. September to December. Yeomans. Peck, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, Vol. 23, No. 10.
B. pic´tus Pk. Pileus convex or nearly plane, at first covered with a red fibrillose tomentum which soon divides into small scales revealing the yellow color of the pileus beneath. Flesh yellow, often slowly changing to dull pinkish or reddish tints where wounded. Tubes tenacious, at first pale yellow, becoming darker or dingy ochraceous with age, sometimes changing to pinkish-brown where bruised, concealed in the young plant by the copious whitish webby veil. Stem equal or nearly so, solid, slightly and somewhat evanescently annulate, clothed and colored like or a little paler than the pileus, yellowish at the top. Spores ochraceous, 9–11×4–5µ.