Boletellus ananas

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by Michael Kuo

Regular readers know that I rarely make a page for a mushroom I have not collected--but take a look at these photos of Boletellus ananas, sent to me in a "What's This Mushroom?" e-mail from Heather Davis, a naturalist at Sam Houston Jones State Park in Louisiana.

Wow. It's hard to imagine a more distinctive bolete, with its coarsely shaggy, hairy scales. Other distinguishing features include the partial veil, which covers the young pore surface and later hangs as remnants on the cap margin; the smooth stem with a reddish zone near the apex; and the yellow pore surface that bruises blue and eventually discolors reddish brown.

The cap color of this mushroom, according to most field guides, is dark red to vinaceous. With a little digging through the literature, however, one can find descriptions of a paler, pinker Boletellus ananas, matching the version in the photos to the right. Coker & Beers (1943), for example, report the species as "pale tan to dull buff with rosy stains."

Description:

Ecology: Uncertain. Possibly mycorrhizal with pines, but often reported growing from pine wood and roots. Murrill (1910) called it "epixylous" (growing from wood) and reported that Earle considered it "a wound parasite on pine trunks or about the base of living pine trees." The illustrated specimens are clearly growing on dead wood. Some later authors downplay the proximity to wood and treat the species as more or less terrestrial. Growing alone or gregariously; spring, summer, and fall; widely distributed along the Gulf Coast and in southeastern North America, extending at least as far south as Costa Rica.

Cap: 4-15 cm, round at first, becoming convex to broadly convex in age; dry; scaly, the scales large, overlapping, and composed of woolly hairs; buff to pinkish, or darker red to purplish red, fading with age.

Pore Surface: Yellow; bruising blue; discoloring reddish brown to brown with age; pores angular and large; tubes to 2 cm deep.

Stem: 5-14 cm long; up to 2.5 cm. thick; more or less equal, or tapering to apex; smooth; dry; whitish to pinkish, usually with a reddish zone near the apex.

Flesh: Whitish to yellowish; staining blue on exposure.

Odor and Taste: Not distinctive.

Chemical Reactions: KOH olive yellow, then maroon on cap. Ammonia olive yellow on cap.

Spore Print: Rusty brown to dark brown.

Microscopic Features: Spores 16-23 x 7.5-9.5 µ; ridged lengthwise; spindle-shaped or nearly so.

REFERENCES: (Curtis, 1848) Murrill, 1910. (Saccardo, 1888; Murrill, 1910; Coker & Beers, 1943; Smith & Thiers, 1971; Smith, Smith & Weber, 1981; Weber & Smith, 1985; Metzler & Metzler, 1992; Both, 1993; Bessette, Roody & Bessette, 2000; Halling & Mueller, 2005.) I have not collected this mushroom.

Further Information Online:

Boletellus ananas in Smith & Thiers, 1971
Boletellus ananas at Macrofungi of Costa Rica

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Cite this page as:

Kuo, M. (2005, March). Boletellus ananas. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/boletellus_ananas.html