Our Edible Toadstools and Mushrooms and How to Distinguish Them / A Selection of Thirty Native Food Varieties Easily Recognizable by their Marked Individualities, with Simple Rules for the Identification of Poisonous Species

by W. Hamilton Gibson

But it is well for the amateur to avoid these notorious species absolutely until their edibility becomes universally accepted by the "professionals."

The bitter Boletus

The Boletus felleus (Plate 24, fig. 1) is a very common species. The pinkish substance of this Boletus is so extremely bitter when raw as to make it sufficiently repellent as food. The color of its smooth cap varies from creamy yellow to reddish brown. Substance white in young specimens, flesh color or pinkish in older individuals. Tube surface white at first, becoming pinkish. Opening of tubes, angled. Stem usually more or less netted with raised lines towards cap. Spores pinkish or "flesh colored." Common in rich soil in woods.

PLATE XXIV
SUSPICIOUS BOLETI

Alveolate Boletus—Boletus alveolatus

Pileus: Smooth, polished; bright, deep crimson or maroon, occasionally mottled or marbled with yellowish; three to six inches in diameter.

Flesh: Firm and solid in substance; pale greenish or yellowish white, changing blue in fracture or where bruised.

Tubes: Tube-surface reaching the stem proper; undulate with uneven hollows; maroon, the tubes in section being yellow beyond their dark red mouths.