A book and several websites later, we'd decided that yes, it probably was a pine bolete - maybe Suillus granulatus, also known as Weeping Bolete.
I would have liked to have eaten something with such a great name, but even with all the resources at our disposal we couldn't be completely sure of its identity, and I was troubled by the fact that all of those resources said pine boletes are autumn mushrooms ... It's definitely not autumn.
I wished we had a fungus expert on hand to make a pronouncement.
Anyway, we had fun chopping it up to see what it looked like inside.
4 comments:
Oh, that's actually grossing me out lol. Doesn't help that I'm not a mushroom fan hehe. What a shame you didn't get a positive ID though to eat it.
haha. Well, yeah, it was a wee bit gross. We're as certain as we can be now that it was an edible kind, definitely a bolete - and almost certainly an edible one ... But it was quite big and old and ravaged looking (even before M beat it about with a stick) ... so this particular specimen may not have been the most appetising.
It smelt so mushroomy! - just like field mushrooms.
We thought we might join The NZ Fungal Network ... and maybe try and get to talk to an expert before we go mushroom hunting again ... (Or ideally, find someone to go with ...)
Just had to come back and comment here. Nathan just looked at the pic and asked me if it was roast pig - it was exactly what I thought it was the other day when I looked at it before reading about it lol.
Woa! Yours looks like some amazing sea creature! The ones I got weren't as *abstract* and *looked* more appealing to eat. I ended up drying them with the idea of adding them to something slow cooked. But I chickened out and binned them!! I was kind of disturbed by the ants who had found a home in some of them. I know they are totally edible and I have eaten them before I just can't remember what they were like. But low and behold we found some *fresh* shitaake at the Westport supermarket - wow, they were sooo good, it's kind of like once you've had fresh shitaake you'd never go back to eating pine bolettes! So now I want to grow shitaake...oooh too many things..too little time... :) Ruth
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