MUSHROOMS - ROYAL BOLETE 2013

MUSHROOMS - Royal Bolete
lat. Boletus regius Krombholz

Because of beautiful carmine red colour of its cap Royal Bolete is a veritable king among the family of Boletacae i.e. within the mushroom genus of Boletus. Besides, its beauty is further accented with beautiful yellow colour of its tubes and with the stem which is along its whole length covered with fine and prominent reticule of the same yellow colour. This excellent edible mushroom is in Croatia no rarity while it is a mushroom event when it is found in north parts of Europe. In Gorski kotar, because of its somewhat more severe climate and higher areas it is also rare, while in Zagreb surroundings, in Slavonic forests, in Lika and in the south parts of our country it is found quite often.
Insufficiently experienced mushroom pickers often confuse royal bolete with similar charming bolete (Boletus speciosus), which has a very similar beautiful cap and stem colour. It is also confused with oak bolete (Boletus appendiculatus) which has the same beautiful yellow colour of gleba (reticule) and stem with distinguished yellow reticule. However, the above mentioned two species of mushrooms essentially differ from royal bolete in the fact that the cut gleba (tubes), stem surface and body on cross section of the fruiting body change its colour in blue. Royal bolete does not change the colour of its tubes or stem, not the colour of the fruiting body, but when pressed on these spots still preserves its wonderfully yellow colour. Royal bolete has another very distinguished characteristic - on the stem basis regularly visible are red spots formed after bites of worms or other parasites.
Numerous other species of boletus can by the colour of their cap be similar to royal bolete, e.g. Dupain’s bolete (Boletus dupaini), purple bolete (Boletus rhodoxanthus), wolf bolete (Boletus lupinus) and oldrose bolete (Boletus rhodopurpureus), that all have reddish gleba (tubes) and stem and whose body on cross section gets abruptly and intensively blue, which differs them from the royal bolete.
The cap of the royal bolete can grow 5 to 15 centimetres wide; it is pretty pulpy or - as Blagaić says - pillow-shaped. While the mushroom is still very young the cap is of half-circle shape and later becomes convex or slightly levelled. In dry weather the surface of the cap is dusty and dry and it is distinguished by its nice carmine red colour with slightly prominent purple tone beneath which the yellow background protrudes. Small tubes (small holes) are gold-yellow, and in older plants oil-yellow, they end in small armpit next to the stem and do not change their gold-yellow colour when pressed. The stem can reach 5 to 15 centimetres, it is of cylindrical shape, on the basis regularly somewhat thickened and often almost rectangularly bent. Beneath the cap it is gold-yellow with distinguished reticule of the same colour and along its length can have red spots on some places, while at the basis it is often red like blood. The body is of though consistence and yellow colour, beneath the fine skin of the cap it is slightly reddish and at the basis of the stem it is reddish. On the cross section of the whole fruiting body the colour does not change; only beneath the fine skin of the cap there is a hardly visible bluish tone. The spores are fusiform, like with many other mushrooms from the genus Boletus and the mass of spores
is olive-green.
The smell and taste of the royal bolete are very pleasant, the mushroom is of excellent quality and because of its body consistence it is considered to be better than the common penny bun (Boletus edulis) that grows under coniferous trees, summer bolete (Boletus reticulatus) and pine bolete (Boletus pinophilus). The royal bolete grows in summer and at the beginning of autumn in deciduous forests in groups or individually. It is traditionally best when fried on red onion, oil and butter to which scrambled eggs, salt and some pepper are added.

Romano Božac, Ph.D.