Brown Birch Boletes on Yarner Heath

While I’m searching for Parasitic Boletes I stumble across a Brown Birch Bolete. They’re lovely mushrooms. They have scaly stalks, small tubes called pores underneath, not gills, and penny-bun style rounded tops.

Leccinum scabrum - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

Brown Birch Bolete - The Hall of Einar - Atlas des champignons comestibles et vénéneux Paris,P. Klincksieck,1891

Their scientific name now is Leccinum scabrum. Leccinum is from the Italian, Leccino, the name for a rough-stemmed bolete, and scabrum is from the word scabers, referring to the scaly stem.

And a bolete? A Bolus is a lump.

Back in 1891 their name was Boletus scaber. Here it is illustrated in the Atlas des champignons comestibles et vénéneux.

Comestible, it says.