Boletaceae: The Porcini Family and Its Poisonous Members

Three Groups in One Family

The six members fall into three groups, and each group ends very differently at the table:

• the porcini group, Porcini and Bronze Bolete, with white flesh that does not stain, fine pores, a netted stem and olive-brown spores
• the Bitter Bolete, not poisonous but bitter enough that one cap spoils a whole pan
• the poisonous red-pored group, Devil's Bolete, Brawny Bolete and a third beech-wood species, with yellow to red pores and flesh or pores that turn blue

The spore print gives one clean split within the family. The bitter bolete drops a clay pink print, while every other member here drops olive-brown. So the print can pull a pan-spoiler out of a porcini basket before it reaches the kitchen.

How You Tell the Porcini Group Apart

Porcini and bronze bolete share those traits. Cap texture, host tree, season, pore age and region do the separating. Bronze bolete is the dark-capped Mediterranean member. Its stable white section and porcini structure count for more than its bronze color. Region is part of the check too. If a specimen comes from outside the range the name fits, you reject it as porcini.

Soil, Region and the Red-Pored Species

Devil's bolete and brawny bolete both grow in warm calcareous woodland with oak, beech and hornbeam. Bitter Beech Bolete grows in beech, oak and conifer woodland, often on acidic ground. Brawny bolete is a rare, massive European species whose flesh stains dark blue-black. Naming it reliably takes the full color sequence, stem net, host, limestone setting, mature pores and a regional key.

European names do not carry across the Atlantic. Mushrooms people call Satan's bolete in North America usually belong to other taxa than the European devil's bolete. All three red-pored species are poisonous, and devil's bolete can cause severe gastrointestinal illness.