Читать книгу Identification of the Larger Fungi - Roy Watling - Страница 14

Cap: width 30–100 mm. Stem: width 15–20 mm; length 50–70 mm.

Description: Plate 2.

Cap: convex or umbonate at first, later expanding and then becoming plano-convex, golden-yellow or rich orange-brown, very slimy because of the presence of a pale yellow sticky fluid.

Stem: apex reddish and dotted or ornamented with a fine network, cream-coloured about the centre because of the presence of a ring which soon collapses, ultimately appearing only as a pale yellow zone; below the ring the stem is yellowish or rusty brown, particularly when roughly handled.

Tubes: adnate to decurrent, deep yellow but becoming flushed wine-coloured on exposure to the air, with angular and small sulphur-yellow pores which become pale pinkish brown to lilaceous or pale wine-coloured when handled.

Flesh: with no distinctive smell, pale yellow immediately flushing lilaceous when exposed to the air, but finally becoming dingy red-brown, sometimes blue or green in the stem-base.

Spore-print: brown with distinct yellowish tint when freshly prepared.

Spores: long, ellipsoid, smooth and pale honey when under the microscope, less than 12 µm in length (8–11 µm long × 3–4 µm broad).

Marginal cystidia: in bundles and encrusted with amorphous brown, oily material. Facial cystidia: similar in shape and morphology to marginal cystidia.

Habitat & Distribution: Found on the ground accompanying larch trees either singly or more often in rings or troops.

General Information: This fungus is easily recognised by the poorly developed ring, overall golden-yellow colour and pale yellow viscidness on the cap which comes off on to the fingers when the fruit-body is handled. There are several closely related fungi which also grow with coniferous trees, e.g. Suillus luteus Fries, ‘Slippery jack’, but many need experience in order to identify them. All these fungi were formerly placed in the genus Boletus, because of the fleshy fruit-body with pores beneath the cap. The larch-bolete receives its common name from the close relationship of the fungus with the larch. On drying S. luteus and S. grevillei may strongly resemble one another but the former can be distinguished when fresh by the chocolate brown, sepia, or purplish brown cap and the large whitish, lilac-tinted ring.

Plate 1. Fleshy fungi: Spores borne within tubes

Larger illustration

Plate 2. Fleshy fungi: Spores borne within tubes

Larger illustration

Species of Suillus are edible and rank highly in continental cook-books, although they have disagreeably gelatinous-slimy caps, a character, in fact, which helps to separate them from other fleshy pore-fungi.

Illustrations: F 41a; Hvass 257; ML 187; NB 104⁴; WD 84².