Читать книгу Identification of the Larger Fungi - Roy Watling - Страница 15

Cap: width 70–130 mm. Stem: width 34–37 mm; length 110–125 mm. (36–40 mm at base).

Description: Plate 3.

Cap: hemispherical, minutely velvety, but soon becoming smooth and distinctly viscid in wet weather, red-brown flushed with date-brown and darkening even more with age and in moist weather to become bay-brown.

Stem: similarly coloured to the cap but paler particularly at the apex, smooth or with faint, longitudinal furrows which are often powdered with minute, dark brown dots.

Tubes: adnate or depressed about the stem, lemon-yellow but immediately blue-green when exposed to the air and with angular, rather large similarly coloured, pores which equally rapidly turn blue-green when touched.

Flesh: strongly smelling earthy, pale yellow but becoming pinkish in centre of the cap, and blue in the stem and above the tubes when exposed to the air, but finally becoming dirty yellow throughout.

Spore-print: brown with a distinct olivaceous flush.

Spores: long, spindle-shaped, smooth, honey-coloured under the microscope and greater than 12 µm in length (13–15 µm long × 5 µm broad).

Marginal cystidia: numerous, flask-shaped and slightly yellowish.

Facial cystidia: scattered and infrequent and similar to marginal cystidia in shape.

Habitat & Distribution: Found in woods, especially accompanying pine trees, but often found fruiting on the site of former coniferous trees, even years after the trunks or the stumps have been removed.

General Information: This fungus is recognised by the rounded, red-brown cap, coupled with the pale yellow flesh and greenish yellow tubes, both of which become greenish blue when exposed to the air. There are several species in the genus Boletus which stain blue at the slightest touch or when the flesh is exposed to the air, e.g. B. erythropus (Fries) Secretan, a common bolete with a dark olivaceous cap, orange pores and red-dotted stem.

The flesh of some species of Boletus, e.g. B. edulis Fries, however, remains unchanged or at most becomes flushed slightly pinkish. Although many people say they recognise B. edulis, the ‘Penny-bun’ bolete—a name derived from the colour of the cap, there is some doubt as to whether the true B. edulis is common in Britain as we are led to believe. B. edulis and its relatives are highly recommended as edible (see p. 35). B. badius is also edible, but it is ill-advised to eat any bolete which turns blue when cut open.

Illustrations: B. badius—F 38c; Hvass 248 (not very good); LH 191; NB 109⁵; WD 85¹. B. edulis: F 42a; Hvass 246; LH 191; NB 143³.