It's a Bolete!

I was wandering my garden, minding my own business when this guy jumped out at me.


And another, with dead ones, and a baby one too. This is not an aberation. It's a population!!




I think it is Bicolor bolete-maybe. I need to do a spore print and get a better look at the stem structure. There is a poisonous look alike, so more investigation is gonna happen.

Here is my dilemma. It is currently just outside of the dripline of a mighty oak. With the days getting shorter, and the sun retreating to the south, they are gaining shade. There is sumac in the understory that I had been planning to pollard way way back. This small colony has trouble ripening the berries before the freeze ends the season. So it is usless to me beyond the early spring shoots, that I have not tried to eat yet... Kinda hard for me to be clambering in the treetop lookin for new growth, at planting time! Anyway, this area would loose some shade.

Anyone know more of this fungi's habitat? Sun tollerance?

Mushroom Expert's bicolor entry.

Additional keys from Mushroom Expert.

More info from Tyrant Farms.

How exciting to find boletes! Hoping for an edible!
Picture 2 looks worrisome. Is that a bruise or poke staining blue: Satan's bolete (Boletus satanas)?

Hmmm.... it's not looking good for my menu.

I took the above pictures 2 days ago. Here's the baby one today. Fading fast. The big one was a congealed black mess.


I went ahead and picked the cap. I imagine the spores are long gone though. Oooh look! Another one!


I  sliced through the stem at the soil surface. Made a mess trying to cut the stem off at the cap. I made the X with the blade of my knife. I cut the stem a second time, immediately the cut turned colors. Is that blue? Looks like what my memory calls indigo. Or black?




I put them away to await spore prints...

Oh, and today we are having a mostly sunny day. The original grouping was is in sun for several hours. The fresh one’s location is full shade. So regardless of edibility, I can cut back my sumac. Whew.

Looking into that satanus, Amy. Thanks.

If it turns blue or black when you cut it or break a small piece of it, it is poisonous.  It is a bit too red on the top also to be an edible one.  The black showing on the underside of your mushroom in the picture is a dead give away, no pun intended!

Thanks Olga. When the stem turned color so fast, I figured that was the case. Any thoughts on what variety it is?

I have found this site a really useful one for helping to identify fungi

https://www.mushroomexpert.com/boletes_red_capped_blue_staining.html

Also, if you don't already have the inaturalist app on your phone, you may wish to download it.

You can upload a photo of the cap, underside, stipe and growing environment and other members will usually offer suggestions.

Any thoughts on what variety it is?

Hi Joylynn,

I am not an expert by any means, but in France mushroom hunting is more than a passion. The old folks would easily start a vendetta if you came to look on their patch and bountiful areas are jealously guarded.  Actually, fights have happened and friendship been terminated over it!

I am not as obsessed, but it is something you learn from very young.  Going mushroom hunting is still a family outing on a Sunday in many rural areas.  So we don't really learn the names (or just the local name), but we learn how to identify them as edible or not. Yours, from what I can see from the picture, more than likely is a boletus, but out of hundreds of boletus, only a few are edible and even fewer palatable.  In France, mushroom hunting is such an obsession that you can take your gathered shrooms to any local pharmacy and someone will identify them for you if you are not sure.

Although every one here make a song and dance about the ceps (boletus edulis) unless you find a young specimen, they are often slimy when cooked, worm and slug eaten most of the time.  Actually, more often than not, the worms are born and grow inside the cep and the bigger the shroom, the bigger the worms.   In a young specimen, you won't notice the worms, but if you are a rigid vegan, you might have to think twice.

Personally, I much prefer Chanterelle or Trompette de la mort (it looks like a black chanterelle), and my absolute favorite is Morel - no worms!

Unless I am absolutely certain which mushroom it is, I leave it well alone.  Pictures and descriptions are fine, but so many mushrooms are so very similar that I like to touch, smell, and see for myself before I venture to eat something that is potentially dangerous.

The fact that a Bolete stains blue does not mean it is poisonous.   Keys to a bicolor bolete is blue staining on the pores, with the stem staining very slowly and cap flesh not at all.  Transition from the pores to the stem is smooth, and perhaps most importantly, the pore layer is extremely short.

In the case of my mushroom above, the staining of the cut stem was immediate. I moved the knife away from the cut, and it was dark dark dark. So, not edible.

Here is an image from Tyrant Farms showing the faint bluing of various portions on bi color specimans.

A closer look at stem and cap cross sections and pore surfaces of bicolor boletes at various ranges of maturity. As you can see: a) they don’t bruise blue (or only mildly/slowly blue) when cut, b) they have a very shallow pore/tube layer, and c) the pore surface bruises blue when scratched. The blue “BB” mark (for bicolor bolete) on the largest mushroom was made simply by scraping the pore surface surface with a knife.

You can see on those pictures what I meant about the smooth transition from president to stem on a bicolor.

And the fact that the stem stains so fast doesn’t definitely means it’s poisonous, it just means you haven’t completely identified the Bolete.  There are very few hard and fast rules you can use on Boletes.