Boletellus dissiliens

Boletellus dissiliens (Corner) Pegler & T.W.K. Young

Cap:- Convex to plane, dry, tan-buff in colour, lacking red pigment with distinctive appressed matted fibrous elements (felty initially) that may break up in patches as the fungus matures. The cap surface extends past the margin of the tubes when young clasping the stem (stipe). With maturity this breaks away spliting stellately.

Tubes:-  are about 6-18 mm long at first golden yellow then brownish ochraceous, cyanscent (blueing) when damaged.

Pores:- concolorous with the tubes and also cyanscent when damaged.

Stipe:-  c.90-110 tall, though there is a bit of variation. Thick solid often with a thickend base coverd with a thick dense mat of pale cream to whitish mycelium. Whitish in colour or sometimes can be concolours with the cap mainly with age, though pale towards the top.

Flesh:- Flesh yellow in cap though turning blue (cyanescent) immediately and dramatically on cutting, then fading to a light greyish-blue. The stipe is white to off-white and doesn't blue on cutting though the base becomes a light brownish-orange.

Spores:- In deposit olive brown.

Comment:- Boletellus species are very easily confused. Though the distinctive features of this species are the appressed surface of the  fine fibres on the cap when young, though they may lift a bit bit with age; the lack of any red or pink; the dense matt of pale hyphae at the base of the stipe; and most importantly when a specimen is cut from the cap down through the stipe only the cap, tubes and pores blue, and they blue instantly, the stipe doesn't change colour except for about a thumb print size section at the very base of the stipe and this becomes a washed out brownish-orange.