The cap is thick, hemispherical or convex, dry, covered with downy scales or bundles of red hairs, yellowish beneath the tomentum, often cracked in areas. The flesh is yellow and unchangeable.
The tubes are subadnate, often depressed around the stem, rather large, dingy-yellow, or yellowish-green.
The stem is very long, equal or tapering upward, roughened by the lacerated margins of the reticular depressions, red or brownish red. The spores are olive-brown, 18–22×8–10µ.
The pileus is one and a half to four inches broad, the stem is three to seven inches long, and three to six lines thick. This is distinguished from the other species by the dry squamulose pileus and the color of the stem. The latter is sometimes curved at the base. Peck.
I have found this species frequently in the woods and open places about Chillicothe. It is one of the easiest of the Boleti to determine. The plants here have a bright brownish-red pileus, with a shade lighter color on the stem; the latter quite rough and tapering toward the cap. They are usually solitary. The plants in Figure 306 were collected in Michigan and photographed by Dr. Fischer.
Boletus vermiculosus. Pk.
Figure 307.—Boletus vermiculosus. One-half natural size.
Vermiculosus means full of small worms. The pileus is broadly convex, thick, firm, dry; smooth, or very minutely tomentose; brown, yellowish-brown or grayish-brown, sometimes tinged with red. The flesh is white or whitish, quickly changing to blue where wounded. The tubes are plane or slightly convex, nearly free, yellow; their mouths small, round, brownish-orange, becoming darker or blackish with age, changing promptly to blue where wounded.