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 3–6 in. broad. Stem 2–4 in. long, 6–12 lines thick.

Thin grassy woods. New York, Peck. Peck, Boleti of the U.S.

West Virginia. September, 1881. New Jersey and Pennsylvania. October, 1887, McIlvaine. Indiana, October, 1898. Dr. J.R. Weist, H.I. Miller.

One of the handsomest of Boleti. It varies greatly in size and color, but traces of purple or lilac are always detectable. The reticulations upon the stem are often obscure, especially in young specimens.

It is pleasant when raw, and quite equal to any Boletus when cooked.

(Plate CXIX.)

1, Boletus edulis, var. clavipes.
2, 3, Boletus edulis.

B. edu´lis Bull.—edulis, edible. (Plate [CXVIII], fig. 5, p. 436.) Pileus convex or nearly plane, glabrous, moist, at first compact, then soft, variable in color, grayish-red, brownish-red or tawny-brown, often paler on the margin. Flesh white or yellowish, reddish beneath the cuticle. Tubes convex, nearly free, long, minute, round, white, then yellow and greenish. Stem short or long, straight or flexuous, subequal or bulbous, stout, more or less reticulate, especially above, whitish, pallid or brownish. Spores oblong-fusiform, 12–15×4–5µ.

Var. cla´vipes. Plate [CXIX]. Stem tapering upward from an enlarged base, everywhere reticulated.