What boletus is this?

[fishhead]

Please can anyone ID this Boletus for me. This is my first post so please be gentle with me if it doesn't work. Thanx!

[endless autumn]

Red-cracked, no? (B. chrysenteron)

I think they are quite a depressing mushroom.

[fishhead]

Originally Posted by endless autumn

Red-cracked, no? (B. chrysenteron)

I think they are quite a depressing mushroom.

Hi Endless Autumn. What do you mean by depressing?

[endless autumn]

Hello Fishhead.

Perhaps it's just an associative thing, but they remind me of bad forays, just as recipes for 'Mock Goose' might remind people of bad times.

Lots of things about them seem a little wrong: they grow easily, but are quick to rot; they are edible, but uninspiring; their flesh is too soft in the cap and too tough in the stem; they are top-heavy and often kicked over; and I find them quite ugly.

They are close to the top of my league of least-liked fungi, alongside Clouded Agarics and Butter Caps, but above other disappointments such as Sulphur Tufts, and Common Ink Caps.

[NickCantle]

Lol how incredibly strange EA

[Fungus Ken]

There is interest to be found even in species many might dismiss as seemingly common and boring.

For example, many would quite happily call the mushrooms in the photographs Boletus chrysenteron and be done with it. But there is a whole world of complexity that this lumping together of species misses out on.

Ladurner and Simonini have produced a new volume in the Fungi Europaei series (which are often in Italian but in this case has a full English translation included so making life a lot easier) on the group of Boletus often separated out into the genus Xerocomus.

On Boletus chrysenteron they say:

"At the outermost base of the stipe the context shows a remarkable dull ochre-brownish colour; the context of the base not bluing; in the field this character can be used to separate easily X. chrysenteron promptly from X. cisalpinus and X. pruinatus"

The photographs seem to show a lot of blueing in the lower half of the stem, which may well suggest this is one of the other two species. It would be hard to say without seeing the characters first hand.

When you look at the paintings and photographs of the species in the group around X. chrysenteron the field characters do all intergrade and the only reliable way of separating them is with the microscopic characters, though with practice you can usually make a good guess in the field ... but only if you open your mind to the other options.

Here are some of the species that potentially could be (and have in my experience been) confused with X. chrysenteron:

X. porosporus
X. pruinatus
X. cisalpinus
X. rubellus which fades from a red cap to brown
X. declivitatum which starts off with a brownish cap and then develops pink or reddish tones but is doubtfully distinct from X. rubellus
X. armeniacus

and I have also seen X. subtomentosus and X. badius misidentified as X. chrysenteron and vice versa.

So, while some people are casually dismissing this group as a boring waste of good foraying time, others are busy trying to put names to the various species and finding ways of reliably distinguishing between them.

Perhaps next time you see a "Red Cracking Bolete" you will think twice before chucking it and instead give it a second glance?

Ken