Mushroom Mystery Solved!

Welcome to the world of mycophylia!

-Adam Giek 

John was curious about seeing my harvest.  I think his expression reveals that he was impressed.

       A few days ago I posted that I was trying to positively identify a mushroom.  It turns out, the mushroom was not the king bolete (Boletus edulis) but, it was a very similar species, the pinewood king bolete (Boletus pinophilus).  The pinewood king bolete is also edible, so I returned to my patches and collected a few more. My original hypothesis was wrong, but not too far off.  In fact, the pinewood king bolete was formerly labeled as a subspecies of the king bolete.  It has since been raised to the level of species.  However, it is always best to be sure with mushrooms.  This identification was only my second experience identifying wild, edible mushrooms.  Fortunately, the boletes are one of the safer groups to learn on.  I still recommend that anybody who is not familiar with wild mushrooms consult a local expert when trying to identify a species for the first time.  I did, and the responses I received were both abundant and helpful.

After identifying the mushroom as edible, I went out to collect more.  Here is my harvest from a 20 minute bike ride.

      Here is how I (with lots of help) identified the mushroom in question.  It had a large, reddish-brown cap attached to a bulbous stalk.  These obvious morphological features were even visible from the road as I sped by on my bike.  A closer look revealed the reticulations on the stalk, and that the mushroom lacked gills.  Instead, it had tightly packed tubes (called pores) covering the entire bottom of the cap.  These features indicated it was a bolete, but I still did not know which one.  My friend, Adam Giek, advised me to not eat any boletes that bruise blue or have red spores (update: he was actually referring to red pores.  See comment below).  It did not bruise blue, but I had trouble getting a spore print.  In a previous post I mentioned that I contacted the UWF Mycology Club for help with identification.  I was disappointed to learn that their website was no longer active.  I did not hear from anybody in the club.  Fortunately, I found a neat website, Florida Fungi.   It has a page where you can email Bill Petty, a mushroom expert, for help with identification!

This is not the original mushroom in question, but it is a good picture of the typical cap of boletes.

The same mushroom as above used to illustrate the pores, instead of gills, found on boletes.

      Bill responded and said that it was "definitely a bolete," but he could not be sure if it was a bitter Tylopilus sp. or a Boletus sp..  Brian Akers also recommended a taste test to determine if it was a Tylopilus sp..  A simple nibble, which I did not swallow, revealed the mushroom to have no bitter flavor (Bill also informed me that it is possible that some people are genetically incapable of detecting the bitter flavor in Tylopilus sp.).  In fact, it was quite tasty.  I knew it was a Boletus sp. but, without a spore print I wasn't going to eat it.  Bill, forwarded my inquiry to some other mycologists who also chimed in.  Taylor Lockwood (Taylor's website), John Penrod, David Lewis and "B" (I am not sure who this is,  but that is how the e-mail was signed) thought it looked like Boletus pinophius and Taylor Lockwood even mentioned how tasty they were.  The only problem was I still lacked a spore print.  I discovered that these boletes get pretty big before they start producing spores.  I didn't want to eat any of the mushrooms until I made sure that they didn't have red spores.  As I said earlier, my first attempt to obtain a spore print failed, but I returned to the same patch and collected a more mature mushroom with the same features (there is, of course, the risk that it was not the same species as the first mushroom I collected).  It produced a greenish-brown print.  Because of the new information the print provided, I was sure that the second mushroom I had collected was a pinewood king bolete and pretty sure that the original mushroom was too.  I ate a small part and it was pretty good.

Finally, a spore print!

       Over the next few days I collected many more.  In fact I had too many to eat at once so I dried some in the oven.  I did, however, discover that in the hot weather we have been having, it is best to collect the mushrooms when they are young.  The bugs get to them pretty quickly.  Bill also suggested I may want to cook the mushrooms because the insects (mostly the flies) could carry harmful microorganisms.

These boletes have been sliced and put in the oven, on low, so they will dehydrate.

They are almost done dehydrating.