One of the most popular group of mushrooms are Boletes, or sponge mushrooms. They have pores instead of the gills and are easily recognized. If you avoid Boletes with red spore surface and blue staining flash/pore it is quite safe to assume that mushroom is edible. Some sources even recommend to completely ignore all gill mushrooms and concentrate only on Boletes.

Genus Leccinum belongs to Boletes and has several distinct characteristics:

• pore surface always starts white and turns gray to black in maturity
• stalks are elongated and covered with dark projections (scabers)
• the flash and pore surface usually stain gray to black, although some very slow

The whole genus contains some 75 species and they are quite common in the Northern hemisphere.

The reputation of Leccinums is a little checkered. There is a number of reports of gastro-intestinal issues connected with these mushrooms.

As far as quality goes, majority of sources rank them as “mediocre”.

In my area there is only two species I find regularly: Leccinum scabrum (common name is Birch Bolete – quite rare)

and Leccinum insigne (Orange Bolete). For Orange one I am never totally sure what I have; there is very similar Leccinum auranticum but that one supposed to stain reddish. Anyway, both are edible so even if mixed, there is no danger to get poisoned.

I never find great flashes of any Leccinum. Usually they show in pairs or small troops (4-5 in the area).  They do show in different places, always under hardwoods. I frequently discard stalk that tends to become quite woody in mature specimens.

 

Majority of finds I dry. They are excellent re-hydrated and process of drying concentrates flavor.  My family and I never had any issue with consuming dried Leccinums.

While visiting my daughter in Scotland in 2014, I actually spotted a number of Orange Boletes from the car. We stopped and here is our find.