Major Groups > Boletes

MushroomExpert.Com

The Boletes ("Boletales")  

[ Basidiomycetes > . . . ]

by Michael Kuo

Imagine taking the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels, and affixing a lot of seeds to the inside of the tube. Then repeat the procedure with many other tubes, and glue them together. Suspend all the tubes from a board, so they hang downward--then wait for the seeds fall out. Somewhere along the long line of natural history, the boletes decided that this would be the most successful way to survive. Their caps look like the caps of the Gilled Mushrooms (a group that decided to hang seeds from sheets of cardboard, instead)--but, on the underside of the cap, there are tubes instead of gills. The tubes are so tightly packed that one sees only the "pore surface"--the openings of the tubes, looking rather like the surface of a sponge.

There are a great many species of boletes, and identifying them ranges from relatively easy to profoundly difficult. In most cases you will need to have fresh mushrooms in front of you in order to be successful--preferably, specimens representing young and mature mushrooms. You will also frequently need to have a spore print available. In some cases, taste is an important factor, as well as chemical reactions and microscopic analysis. Boletes are mycorrhizal partners with trees--so noting what kind of tree is "hosting" your bolete can also be important information in the identification process.

 		 

Leccinum versipelle



© MushroomExpert.Com

Some truly delicious edible mushrooms are among the boletes, as well as many that are "edible" but not particularly good, and a few that are poisonous. In my experience boletes--even the best of them, like Boletus edulis--are not very good when cooked fresh; their consistency just doesn't work out, somehow, and they wind up being insipid. Dried and reconstituted, however, they are almost unbeatable.

Recent DNA studies have revealed some interesting things about the boletes, and the order Boletales now includes some rather strange bedfellows. To see how the order Boletales is currently divided into families and genera, see the Taxonomy page.


Key to Boletes


1.Partial veil present (check cap margin, stem, and pore surface of button-stage specimens).
2

1.Partial veil absent.
5


2.Cap dry, shaggy or scaly, black to grayish or grayish pink; pore surface not yellow.

2.Not completely as above.
3


3.Partial veil powdery and bright yellow; cap dry; bruising blue on handling.

3.Not completely as above.
4


4.Cap reddish to pinkish, densely shaggy with hairy scales; stem smooth; tropical and subtropical in distribution.

4.Not completely as above.


5.Scabers present on stem (be sure to compare scabers with glandular dots and reticulation if these terms are new to you).
6

5.Scabers absent from stem.
8


6.Stem base chrome yellow; cap pinkish to pinkish brown.

6.Not completely as above.
7


7.Scabers inconspicuous and not contrasting dramatically with the color of the mature stem (be sure you are looking at mature specimens) and spore print olive to olive brown.

7.Scabers well defined and contrasting with the color of the mature stem and/or spore print brown to pinkish brown or yellowish brown.


8.Cap irregularly shaped and wavy when mature, not slimy, brownish to yellowish brown or pinkish brown; pore surface boletinoid; under ash in eastern North America or under alder on the West Coast.
9

8.Not completely as above.
10


9.Under ash in eastern North America.

9.Under alder on the West Coast.
Gyrodon lividus
at Fungi of Poland


10.Cap with hairy scales, black to grayish or pinkish gray; flesh turning pinkish to reddish when sliced (often slowly); under hardwoods.

10.Not completely as above.
11


11.Mushroom with any two of the following features:
  • Growing under conifers
  • Cap thickly slimy when fresh
  • Glandular dots present on stem
  • Pores large, angular, and radially arranged or boletinoid
  • Spore print cinnamon brown

11.Mushroom without two of the features above.
12


12.Pore surface frequently (Caucasian) flesh-colored to pinkish when mature; taste often (but not always) bitter; spore print pinkish brown to reddish brown or brown--never olive brown.

12.Pore surface almost never pinkish when mature; taste variable; spore print yellow, olive, olive brown, or (rarely) brown--very rarely reddish brown.
13


13.Spore print yellow.
14

13.Spore print olive, olive brown, or brown.
15


14.Stem hollow and brittle by maturity; spore print fairly bright yellow.

14.Stem more or less solid and firm; spore print brownish yellow.
Xanthoconium
treated with Boletus


15.Spores ridged or pitted. (If you do not have a microscope, several of the dozen or so members of Boletellus and Austroboletus can be quickly assessed; follow the link for details.)

15.Spores smooth.



References    (See also the references listed on individual genus pages.)

Arora, D. (1986). Mushrooms demystified: A comprehensive guide to the fleshy fungi. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press. 959 pp.

Baroni, T. J. (1978). Chemical spot-test reactions–-boletes. Mycologia 70: 1064-1076.

Bessette, A. E., Roody, W. C. & Bessette, A. R. (2000). North American boletes: A color guide to the fleshy pored mushrooms. China: Syracuse UP. 399 pp.

Binder, M. & D. Hibbett (2004). Toward a global phylogeny of the boletes. Retrieved from the Clark University Web site: http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/dhibbett/boletales_stuff/Global_Boletales_2004_28S.gif

Both, E. E. (1993). The boletes of North America: A compendium. Buffalo NY: Buffalo Museum of Science. 436 pp.

Coker, W. C. and Beers, A. H. (1943). The boleti of North Carolina. New York: Dover. 96 pp. (1971 reprint.)

Frost, C. C. (1874). Catalogue of boleti of New England, with descriptions of new species. Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Science 2: 100-105.

Grund, D. W. & Harrison, A. K. (1976). Nova Scotian boletes. Germany: J. Cramer. 283 pp.

Halling, R. E. (1983). Boletes described by Charles C. Frost. Mycologia 75: 70-92.

Halling, R. E. & Mueller, G. M. (1999). New boletes from Costa Rica. Mycologia 91: 893-899.

Moncalvo, J. M., et al. (2002). One hundred and seventeen clades of euagarics. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 23: 357–400. An online version of this paper is available at: http://www.biology.duke.edu/fungi/mycolab/publications/117clades.html

Murrill, W. A. (1909). The Boletaceae of North America I. Mycologia 1: 4-18.

Ortiz-Santana, B., D. J. Lodge, T. J. Baroni & E. E. Both (2007). Boletes from Belize and the Dominican Republic. Fungal Diversity 27: 247-416.

Scales, K. (2004). Trial field key to the boletes in the Pacific Northwest. Retrieved from the Pacific Northwest Key Council Web site: http://www.svims.ca/council/Boletes.htm

Singer, R. (1945). The boletinae of Florida. Germany: J. Cramer. 126 pp. (1977 reprint.)

Smith, A. H. & Thiers, H. D. (1968). Notes on boletes–I. 1. The generic position of Boletus subglabripes and Boletus chromapes. 2. A comparison of four species of Tylopilus. Mycologia 60: 943-954.

Smith, A. H. & Thiers, H. D. (1971). The boletes of Michigan. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P. 428 pp. An online version of this book is available here, at the University of Michigan Herbarium (URL too long for duplication).

Smith, A. H., Smith, H. V. & Weber, N. S. (1981). How to know the non-gilled mushrooms. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown. 324 pp.

Snell, W. H. & Dick, E. A. (1970). The boleti of northeastern North America. Germany: J. Cramer. 115 pp.

Thiers, H. D. (1975). The boletes of California (online reprint of California mushrooms: A field guide to the boletes). Retrieved from the MykoWeb Web site: http://www.mykoweb.com/boletes/index.html

Thiers, H. D. (1976). Boletes of the southwestern United States. Mycotaxon 3: 261-273.

Watling, R. (Date not recorded). Leccinum revisited. Retrieved from the Fungus Group of South East Scotland Web site: http://www.ierm.ed.ac.uk/fgslec.htm



Cite this page as:

Kuo, M. (2005, March). The boletes ("Boletales"). Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/boletales.html