Bolete with boletinoid pores
Suillus or Phylloporus Genus
Angles captured. Two from above with the fruitbody lying upside down — pore surface up — then two close obliques after it was righted.
Morphology
The hymenophore is the whole story, and it is now legible. Bright chrome-yellow, and built of large, angular, radially arranged plates running outward from the stipe, joined by cross-walls into an irregular honeycomb — coarse enough near the margin to read as gills, clearly pored toward the centre. Toward the cap edge a paler grey-olive reticulate zone. A dark olive-black bruise where handled. Stipe yellow, robust, with fine dark punctate dots.
Habitat & substrate
Oak leaf litter on a slope with sparse green herbs. Terrestrial, solitary.
Lookalikes & what rules them out
A radially arranged, cross-veined yellow hymenophore is a narrow character. It occurs in Suillus subgenus Boletinus, where the pores are boletinoid, and in Phylloporus, the gilled bolete, whose thick yellow decurrent gills anastomose in exactly this way. Ordinary Boletus and Leccinum have fine round pores and are excluded.
To confirm this identification
Slice the hymenophore vertically. Separable blade-like plates mean Phylloporus; a spongy layer of fused tubes means Suillus. Also note whether the bruise goes blue rather than olive.
Notes
Twice revised. First logged as Suillus, then downgraded to family on the reasoning that the coarse texture was a torn tube layer. At full resolution it is neither torn nor damaged — the plates are regular, radial and cross-veined across the whole surface. My correction was the error, not the original call. Restored to genus level, now with the two candidates named and a test that separates them.
Found at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary, Worcester, MA on Friday, 31 July 2026 at 17:52. See the full walk for that day's weather and everything else recorded.
Others in this group
Large orange-brown bolete, uprootedBoletaceae · Jul 31Low–moderate
Olive-brown boleteBoletaceae · Aug 6Low–moderate
Dark chestnut boleteBoletaceae · Aug 6Moderate
Wine-red boleteBoletaceae · Aug 6Moderate
Orange-capped boletesBoletaceae · Aug 6Low–moderate
Red-capped bolete with yellow poresBoletaceae · Aug 8Moderate
Yellow-brown boleteBoletaceae · Aug 8Low–moderate
Red-brown bolete against a logBoletaceae · Aug 8Low