About this fungus
Golden Gilled Bolete is a fungus in the Boletaceae family. Its habitat and field characteristics are summarised below.
A bolete relative with thick golden-yellow gills instead of pores. The cap is dry, often reddish to red-brown, and may crack as it expands.
What to check
Look for thick, widely spaced yellow gills with many cross-veins, running slightly down the stem. The cap is dry rather than slimy and the mushroom grows from soil near living trees. Blue-green staining can be absent, faint or variable, so it should be recorded rather than used as a single pass or fail test.
Variation
Caps range from reddish-yellow through red-brown to olive-brown and often fade or crack in dry conditions. Gill colour remains a much stronger clue than cap shade.
Lookalikes
Other Phylloporus species share the yellow, cross-veined gills and are separated by geography, staining, microscopic features and DNA. Western North American records need particular care because similar regional species occur there. Ordinary gilled mushrooms can look similar from above, so the unusually thick cross-veined gills are important.
Habitat and range
Ectomycorrhizal on woodland soil, usually with hardwoods including oak and beech in eastern North America. The strict species concept is centred on the Americas; superficially similar gilled boletes elsewhere may have other names.
Food safety
Edible and good.
Use this profile to learn what to examine and compare, not as proof that a mushroom is safe to eat. Check the whole specimen and every important lookalike before reaching an identification.