A massive, poisonous bolete of warm broad-leaved woodland on chalky soils in southern and central Europe and the Mediterranean. It has a pale greyish-white cap, red pores, a bulbous stem covered in a red net, and flesh that turns faintly blue. Older specimens smell of carrion. Eating it, especially raw, causes severe vomiting and diarrhoea.
Poisonous. Causes severe gastrointestinal illness (nausea, violent vomiting, bloody diarrhoea), especially when raw. It contains the toxic protein bolesatine and only trace muscarine. Reports of eating it after long boiling are unproven. Do not eat.
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Habitat
Ectomycorrhizal with oak and sweet chestnut, also hornbeam, beech and lime, in warm broad-leaved and mixed woodland on calcareous soils; summer and early autumn.
Distribution
Temperate Europe, mostly southern regions; rare in the north (southern England, a few Baltic islands); eastern Mediterranean (Israel, Cyprus), Turkey, Crimea and Ukraine. Western North American records belong to Rubroboletus eastwoodiae, not this species.
Characteristics
Cap: usually up to 30 cm (rarely 40-50 cm), greyish-white to silvery or buff, becoming olive or ochre-brown, finely velvety then smooth. Pores: yellow to orange at first, turning purplish-red to carmine from the stem outward; bluing instantly when touched. Tubes: pale yellow to greenish-yellow, bluing. Stem: 5-15 cm, strongly bulbous, golden-yellow at the apex, pinkish-red to carmine below, covered in a fine red hexagonal net. Flesh: whitish to yellowish, turning faded blue. Odour: faintly musky when young, putrid with age. Spore print: olive-green. Spores: 10-16 x 4.5-7.5 µm, fusiform.
