Welcome back to Mushroom Monday, your weekly look at some of PEI’s easy-to-identify fungi. I’ve been seeing today’s mushroom all over the place this year, and its distinctive features make it a good one for beginners. Meet Peppery Bolete (Chalciporus piperatus).
As a group, Boletes are mushrooms that usually have spongy pores rather than gills, folds, or teeth under their caps. As with many things in nature there are exceptions. Not all members of the Bolete group have pores (I’ll introduce you to a gilled member next week) but you can safely call any spongy-pored mushroom a Bolete.
There are hundreds of species of Boletes, and some are easier to identify than others. Colour of the cap, stem, and pores; colour change when cut or bruised; any marks or patterns on the stem; texture; and smell are among the helpful clues. For Peppery Bolete, I’ll add taste to that list – more on that in a moment.
Peppery Bolete is smaller than many of its relatives on PEI, and the orange-brown cap rarely gets larger than eight centimetres (three inches) across (Photo 1). From above, I’d describe this mushroom as rather plain and unremarkable, but a look under the cap reveals a different story!
A distinctive feature of this mushroom are its large, angular, reddish-brown pores that start to run down the top of the brittle, easily snapped stem (Photo 2). The base of the stem is sometimes covered in fuzzy mycelium, which you can think of as the main body of the fungus (the mushroom we see is only the ‘fruit’). If you cut Peppery Bolete in two, you’ll see the flesh of the stem is bright yellow, becoming paler in the cap and often with a zone of pink where it meets the pores (Photo 3).
Those features combine to point to Peppery Bolete, but you can do one final test to confirm: nibble a bit of it. Peppery Bolete is well named with a distinctive, peppery taste that’s stronger in the stem than the cap. This mushroom is edible when cooked, and I was intrigued by reports that ran the gamut from as spicy as hot chilis to mild and delicious. Obviously, I had to try it for myself.
My first approach for any new-to-me edible mushroom is to fry a small amount in butter until well browned (Photo 4). Peppery Boletes’ spiciness disappeared entirely upon cooking, and the flavour was very mild – much more so than store-bought button mushrooms. The bland flavour combined with the soft-verging-on-slimy texture of the pores put this in the bottom third of the 22 wild species I’ve tried so far. Peppery Bolete is said to hold its spiciness when dried and can be used as a condiment. I haven’t tested that yet, but if it’s true that would be a much better way to use this species in the kitchen.
Peppery Bolete grows from the ground singly or in small groups, and I’ve been finding it in grassy old fields near White Spruce. It’s believed to form relationships with conifers, supplying them with water and nutrients in exchange for sugars they produce via photosynthesis. More recently, it's been suggested that Peppery Bolete may be parasitic on Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria var. guessowii, featured here: https://www.pei-untamed.com/post/fly-agaric). Correlation is not causation, but all the Peppery Boletes I’ve seen so far have been associated with Fly Agaric.
We’re nearing the end of mushroom season, but there are still species to be found on PEI untamed!
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