Red Cracking BoleteXerocomellus chrysenteron
Traditionally collected in: Russia, Poland and Germany
Description
A small bolete with a dry, velvety olive-brown cap. As the cap expands it often cracks, revealing pinkish or reddish flesh beneath. The pores are yellow and bruise blue-green.
Where it grows
In broadleaved and mixed woodland, on mossy banks, woodland edges and beside tracks.
From summer into autumn, especially after wet weather.
«Red Cracking Bolete — or something like it?»
If the description above leaves you unsure, do not guess from memory and do not compare by eye with a picture off the internet. Our photo identifier shows several likely candidates with percentages, and names the dangerous lookalikes if there are any — rather than one confident answer.
In detail
Season
Fruits from mid June to mid October.
What to do with it
This species may not be picked (see «Caution» below), so storing and cooking do not belong here. If you find one: photograph it where it stands, do not cut or dig it up, and remember the spot for your own records — the mycelium fruits there year after year.
Take care
Edible when correctly identified and cooked. The pores and flesh can bruise blue-green. Older fruitbodies become soft quickly and are best left.
Nothing on this page is an expert opinion, and nothing here confirms that the mushroom you found is edible. Photo identification in this service is a probabilistic hint, not permission to pick or to eat.
Lookalikes
Inedible: the flesh is burning hot with pepper and the species carries toxins. In the pan it turns the whole dish bitter.
- ·Colour of the pore surface: rust-coloured, rusty or reddish brown in the Peppery Bolete; yellow in the Red Cracking Bolete, turning olive-brown with age.
- ·Reaction on cutting: the flesh of the Red Cracking Bolete turns blue; that of the Peppery Bolete turns pink to red but never blue.
- ·Cut the bottom of the stem: in the Peppery Bolete the flesh there is sulphur yellow and the mycelium bright yellow.
- ·Taste with the tip of the tongue and spit it out: burning in the Peppery Bolete, bland in the Red Cracking Bolete.
Edible, but watery-fleshed and of no great quality. Telling it from the Red Cracking Bolete matters not for safety but so that the Peppery Bolete is not taken for it.
A photograph cannot settle this pair. The decisive mark is the carrot-orange dotting in the flesh at the very base of the stem, which shows only on a lengthways cut and hardly ever appears in a picture. Cap colour misleads here: the base of a Red Cracking Bolete is often wine-red too, and a faded Ruby Bolete turns brown.
Edible, like the Red Cracking Bolete, and of the same middling quality. A mistake in this pair leads nowhere.
A photograph cannot settle this pair. The pinkish layer in the cracks depends on age and wetness and is not always visible in an image, and the blueing cannot be checked without cutting. The final separation is by spores under a microscope: those of the Sepia Bolete have a truncated end.
Edible, on a par with the Red Cracking Bolete. The pair is listed only for accuracy of naming.
A photograph cannot settle this pair. Neither the degree of cracking nor the thickness of the cap skin can be measured from an image, and the strength of the blueing shows only on a fresh cut. For a good share of collections these two are separated only by their spores under a microscope.
Check whether this one is out near you
The foraging forecast changes daily — with rainfall, temperature and the phase of the flush, rather than «it ought to be the season».
Your comment
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Updated from the FungRadar species reference · not a specialist's determination