Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi / How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc.

by Charles McIlvaine; Robert K. Macadam

Pileus 1–3 in. broad. Stem 1–3 in. long, 3–6 lines thick.

Woods and mossy banks.

The species is common and very variable. The color of the pileus may be yellowish-brown, reddish-brown, brick-red, tawny or olivaceous. The subcutaneous reddish tint and the reddish chinks of the cracked pileus are distinguishing features. Wounds of the tubes sometimes become blue then greenish. Authors disagree concerning the edible qualities of this Boletus. Stevenson gives it as edible, but Cordier and Gillet say that it is regarded with suspicion. In one strongly marked form the tubes are decidedly depressed around the stem, in another the flesh is whitish tinged with red. It may be doubted whether these are varieties or distinct species. Peck, Boleti of the U.S.

I have found, and eaten plentifully of this species in West Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, from July until October. I have no hesitancy in recommending it in all of its varieties. Excepting from very young specimens the tubes and stems should be removed. The flesh is sweet, delicate and toothsome.

B. fumo´sipes Pk. Pileus convex or nearly plane, minutely tomentose, sometimes minutely rivulose, dark olive-brown. Flesh whitish. Tubes at first nearly plane, becoming convex with age, their mouths whitish when young, becoming yellowish-brown, changing to bluish-black where bruised. Stem equal, solid, smoky-brown, minutely scurfy under a lens. Spores purplish-brown, 12.5–15×5–6µ.

Pileus 1–2 in. broad. Stem 1–2 in. long, 3–4 lines thick.

Woods. Port Jefferson. July.

This species resembles small dark-colored forms of B. chrysenteron, and this resemblance is still more noticeable in those specimens in which the pileus cracks in areas, for in these the chinks become red as in that species. The different color of the stem and tubes will at once separate these species. Peck, 50th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.

B. ru´beus Frost—red. Pileus broadly convex, very finely appressed subtomentose, bright brick-red when young, becoming mottled with red and yellow, yellow under the cuticle, the thin margin at first inflexed, then horizontal, curved upward when old. Flesh pale-yellow, changing to blue where wounded. Tubes adnate or slightly depressed around the stem, lemon-yellow and stuffed when young, becoming yellow and sometimes red at the mouths. Stem small, often flexuous, colored like the pileus, reddish within, white-tomentose at the base. Spores 9–12.5×4–5µ.

Pileus 2–4 in. broad. Stem 1–3 in. long, 3–5 lines thick.