Boletus cyanescens. Bull.
Figure 288.—Boletus cyanescens.
Cyanescens is from cyaneus, deep blue, so called the moment you touch it, it turns a deep blue.
Pileus is two to four inches across, convex, then expanded, sometimes nearly plane, frequently wavy, covered with an appressed tomentum; opaque, pale-buff, grayish-yellow, or yellowish, flesh thick, white, quickly changing to a beautiful azure-blue where cut or wounded.
The tubes are quite free, openings small, white, then pale-yellow, round, changing color the same as the flesh.
The stem is two to three inches long, ventricose, hoary with fine hair, stuffed at first, then becoming hollow, colored like the pileus.
The spores are subelliptical, 10–12.5×6–7.5µ.
The specimens in Figure 288 were found on rather steep wooded hillsides, Sugar Grove, Ohio. They were all solitary. I have found a few specimens about Chillicothe. They are widely distributed in the Eastern states.