After a long period of high heath and quite a bit of rain finally some boletes started to show up.

For almost full month oysters were the only mushroom present in the woods. The expected crop of rusullas and chanterelles did not appear. Even little mushrooms, usually abundant on fallen logs were not there. Hiking on the trails was tedious and unpleasant due to high temperature and extreme humidity. Occasional thunder storm did not get any relief.

The first sign of upcoming boletes season were some Ornate stalk boletes (Rhetiboletus ornatipes). This  very yellow mushroom shows up in deciduous woods, scattered under beech and oak. I find them all over the forest floor, but never in some great groups or big flushes. Very frequently sources claim that Ornate stalk bolete mushroom is bitter and therefore not really edible. In all this years I never had a single collection that was bitter and my family and friends consume great quantities of this gorgeous mushroom. Here are several of my observations about this bolete:

• although it is usually quite yellow overall, some specimens can have olive green cap
• the stalk can be quite long and it is very reticulated (ridged); frequently stalk is rotten inside and same rot can invade cap itself
• mushroom is quite bug resistant and it is hard to find some badly infested specimen
• for some reason they prefer slopes of the hills
• the cap is dry
• pores are yellow, becoming darker with age
• there is absolutely no staining and darkening when cut and handled

Here is a gallery of some of my finds: