Mottled Bolete

Leccinum variicolor

Mixed, grassy, damp forests, likes the company of birch. Summer, autumn.

Fruiting bodies large. Cap 8-12 cm across, matt, slimy only in damp weather, greyish mottled brown or even blackish-brown. Tubes and pores white, later yellowish, turning brownish when pressed. Stem 10-15x2-3 cm, white, covered with black fibrils. The flesh of the cap and stem quickly turns reddish when cut, eventually fading; at the base of the stem it turns blue, green. Characteristic features: a mushroom of damp, boggy mixed forests and nettle-rich black alder woods. Grows in birch woods and in mixed, deciduous, grassy, boggy forests with birch. Edible, valuable, common, but found less often than the Brown Birch Bolete.