Mushrooms With Pores Instead of Gills
By IdentifyThese Editorial · Reviewed · 3 min read
Boletes are the easiest large group of mushrooms to place and among the hardest to name.
Nothing here is a licence to eat anything. Identification for the table requires an experienced local mycologist and a specimen in hand, not a description.
What makes a bolete
Under the cap, a layer of tightly packed vertical tubes opening as a spongy surface of pores, rather than the blade-like gills of an agaric.
The layer usually peels away from the cap flesh in one sheet, which is a good confirmatory test.
Most are stout, with a thick stem, and they grow from soil in partnership with tree roots rather than on wood.
The distinction between gills, pores and teeth is the first fork in any identification, and it is set out in gills, pores or teeth.
Why the group is safer than most
No bolete in northern temperate regions is known to be deadly.
That is not the same as safe. Several cause severe gastrointestinal illness, and one European species has been implicated in more serious poisoning. The absence of a lethal member simply means mistakes in this group are usually survivable, which is a low bar and a real one.
The features that matter
| Feature | What it suggests |
|---|---|
| Red or orange pores | Avoid |
| Flesh staining blue rapidly on cutting | Caution; several toxic species |
| Very bitter taste | Inedible even when harmless |
| Pores white to yellow, no staining | The commoner edible group |
| Netted pattern on the stem | Present in some choice and some poor species |
| Growing on wood | Not a true bolete; reconsider |
The old rule — avoid red pores and blue staining — excludes many of the problem species and also excludes several perfectly good ones, and it lets a few unpleasant species through. It is a filter rather than a test.
Bitterness
The bitter bolete is common, harmless and ruins any dish it is added to, and a very small piece is enough to make a pan inedible.
The pink-tinged pores and the dark netting on the stem separate it from the porcini group, which is one of the more useful distinctions in the family for anyone learning it with an expert.
Insect damage
Boletes are attractive to fly larvae, and a large proportion of what is found is riddled.
Cutting a specimen lengthwise on collection shows this immediately and saves carrying home something that will be discarded. It also reveals the flesh colour and any staining reaction, which is the information worth having anyway.
Where they grow
Almost all form mycorrhizal partnerships with trees, which means they appear under particular species — oak, birch, pine, beech — rather than at random.
Recording the trees present is therefore part of the identification and not an optional note, in the same way that habitat is for any mycorrhizal group. That is why a specimen brought in without any record of what it was growing under is often unidentifiable.
The honest position
The bolete group is a good one to learn because the shapes are distinctive and the consequences of error are lower than elsewhere.
It is still a group where species-level identification frequently requires microscopy, chemical tests or a specialist, and where the safest route is a local society rather than a book.
The pore surface changes with age
Young boletes have firm pale pore surfaces that darken, soften and become olive or greenish as spores mature.
A specimen photographed as a mature example looks quite different from the same species when young, which is one of the reasons a single photograph so often fails to identify one. Collecting several stages of the same colony is standard practice for exactly this reason.
Species referenced
Read this before anything else
- Never eat a wild mushroom identified by a website or an app.That includes this one. These tools narrow possibilities; they cannot see your mushroom, its base, its smell or its habitat, and the difference between a meal and a liver transplant is sometimes a feature buried in the soil.
- Get it confirmed in person by an experienced local forager or a mycological society. Most regions have one, most run free identification sessions, and they will look at the actual specimen.
- Dig, do not pull. The cup at the base of a death cap is often underground. Pulling the mushroom leaves the most important feature in the soil.
- If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels unwell, call poison control now — in the US, 1-800-222-1222. Do not wait for symptoms to worsen. Amatoxin poisoning has a false recovery phase, and delayed treatment is what makes it fatal. Save any uneaten pieces for identification.
Keep reading
- Gills, Pores or Teeth? The First QuestionWhat is under the cap splits the fungi into groups before anything else. It also decides how much trouble a mistake can cause.
- The Parts of a Mushroom You Have to CheckSix features carry nearly all identification, and two of them are commonly destroyed by the way people pick. Here is what each one is and why it matters.
- How to Take a Spore Print — and Why It Matters So MuchA spore print costs nothing, takes a few hours, and separates several deadly mushrooms from the edible species they resemble. Here is how, and what each colour rules out.