Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Penny bun

Boletus Edulis

Description:

The cap of this mushroom is 7–30 cm (3–12 in) broad at maturity. Slightly sticky to touch, it is convex in shape when young and flattens with age. The colour is generally reddish-brown fading to white in areas near the margin, and continues to darken as it matures. The stipe, or stem, is 8–25 cm (3.5–10 in) in height, and up to 7 cm (2.8 in) thick—rather large in comparison to the cap; it is club-shaped, or bulges out in the middle. It is finely reticulate on the upper portion, but smooth or irregularly ridged on the lower part. The under surface of the cap is made of thin tubes, the site of spore production; they are 1 to 2 cm (0.4 to 0.8 in) deep, and whitish in colour when young, but mature to a greenish-yellow. The angular pores, which do not stain when bruised, are small — roughly 2 to 3 pores per millimetre. In youth, the pores are white and appear as if stuffed with cotton (which are actually mycelia); as they age, they change colour to yellow and later to brown. The spore print is olive brown. The flesh of the fruit body is white, thick and firm when young, but becomes somewhat spongy with age. When bruised or cut, it either does not change colour, or turns a very light brown. Fully mature specimens can weigh about 1 kg (2.2 lb); a huge specimen collected on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, in 1995 bore a cap of 42 cm (16.5 in), with a stipe 18 cm (7.1 in) in height and 14 cm (5.5 in) wide, and weighed 3.2 kg (7.1 lb).[30] Stem shape can range from club-shaped to centrally bulbous B. edulis is considered one of the safest wild mushrooms to pick for the table, as no poisonous species closely resemble it.

Habitat:

Boletus edulis, commonly known as penny bun, porcino or cep, is a basidiomycete fungus, and the type species of the genus Boletus. Widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere across Europe, Asia, and North America, it does not occur naturally in the Southern Hemisphere, although it has been introduced to southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Several closely related European mushrooms formerly thought to be varieties or forms of B. edulis have been shown using molecular phylogenetic analysis to be distinct species, and others previously classed as separate species are conspecific with this species. The western North American species commonly known as the California king bolete (Boletus edulis var. grandedulis) is a large, darker-colored variant first formally identified in 2007.

Notes:

Spotted in the S.Joâo Hospital gardens,a place where i never imagined that could sustein such a amazing variety of fungis and trees,beautiful in this season

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

2 Comments

Thanks Cindy,it was rufly 10cm of cup diameter.
see this ones, it was the bigest that i have spotted until now,i know they are edible but i never eated wild mushrooms,it's to risky in my point of vue,but these one are wummy :-)
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/168...

Nice spotting. How big was this Bolete?

Porto, Portugal

Spotted on Nov 16, 2012
Submitted on Dec 31, 2012

Related Spottings

Boletus Boletus mushroom Boletus boletus

Nearby Spottings

Rock Pigeon Swiis Cheese Plant(costela de adão) Paddle cactus Potato Bush
Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team