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Not a boletus bicolor?


Sunny_0ne

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I apologize for the poor quality of these mushrooms. They usually grow in abundance around here, but this was the only one I could find now.

I am not sure what they are. They have a lot of resemblances to boletus bicolor with a couple of differences from the descriptions in the book.

The pore surface instantly turns dark blue when bruised. The flesh shows a very light bluing near the pores. My confusion is that there is no yellow top to the stalk. The red goes all the way up.

Since I have read that boletus bicolor (when correctly identified) makes some people sick, I am doubly reluctant to experiment with eating these. But I would love to know if it is a boletus bicolor that doesn't know it's supposed to have a yellow apex on its stalk or if it's something else. :)

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Tina and I collected a bunch of what I thought were bicolors about a month ago and were disappointed to find out there were so many similar but with the danger of making you ill. I decided to look for traits of the bad ones. One of these was a full red stem and is associated with boletus bicoloroides ( I think I spelled that right). This one is supposed to be around the great lakes, but I don't care Im not taking any chances. I am new to this and boletes seem to be a bit of a challenge. Some of the traits in the bicolors I noted that made them unique from the others were the yellow apex at the stem and the very small and shallow pores.

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DS, I had also read Michael Kuo's description of boletus bicoloroides and the dark red cap (as opposed to rose red) wasn't a perfect fit either.

I do think the pores in my specimen are longer than the 1 cm max that the boletus bicolor is supposed to have.

I appreciate your input because it helps to know that I am not the only one experiencing a bit of confusion with that mushroom.

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I about give up on boletes. They near drove me crazy. I had a list of mushrooms I wanted to find this year and found them all other than king boletes and hen of the woods. I guess the time is coming for both of them. I think gilled mushrooms and red..blue staining boletes can wait until next year; although, the one bicolor we tried was the best tasting mushroom I had all year.

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The red-and-yellow boletes are a very confusing group. So how much red should the stalk of a true B. bicolor show? I don't know how to answer this question. Basiacally, it varies. But I still collect some of what I believe to be B. bicolor for eating.

My personal criteria for B. bicolor ID are as follows: stem mostly red, tubes very shallow, flesh either does not turn blue or does so slowly and fairly weakly, flesh yellow.

Staining reactions (bluing) on the pores and stem surface are variable for this species complex.

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