This specimen has been accessioned to the UT fungarium with the following number:

UT-M0000507

…was sent to Dr. B.T.M. Dentinger at UMNH in March 2018.

Looking forward to your package! Sounds like I need to buy more storage bins. :-)

packing you off a fairly good sized box of this summer’s critters this coming week. Hope you enjoy. There is one specimen I never did find again after you mentioned wanting it. Sorry about that. I do believe the furry denizens of the forest enjoy those – unless there are some “velvet bolete” aficionados running about behind me. I’ll get them for you next time, I know where they live!

It’s been a rather busy bolete season around here and then I got a large parcel filled with dried goodies from Dario Z. I had to purchase several air-tight ziplock storage bins to accommodate all the collections in my burgeoning “boletarium”. Now I am finally beginning to have some semblance of order around here. :-)

Hardly saw any good Boletes this season. But there still could be a few. I’ll keep looking.

> A clean and contiguous TEF-1 sequenced of 614 bps was obtained from this material and posted to the comment below. There are no ambiguous characters.
> As expected, a BLAST search of this sequence gave a hit list consistent with this being a member of the “Alloboletus” section of Boletus sensu stricto. There are no perfect or close matches, as TEF-1 for nobilis is not in GenBank yet! The top 5 hits with ~96—>93% similarity are vouchers of Boletus violaceoufuscus (2), Boletus separans, Boletus semigasteroides (=Notholepiota areolata), and Boletus sp. HKAS62903. Then there is a sudden drop off to 89% with B. reticuloceps, a core member of porcini s.s.
> This TEF-1 sequence is identical to that of obs 255268, making these two collections conspecific.

> A clean , contiguous nrLSU sequence of 973 bps has been obtained from this material.
A GenBank BLAST search of the full-length sequence gave the following profile (sorted by % identity):
Top Hit = Boletus nobilis, GB accession #EU232002; 843/844 = 99.9% similarity (1 gap, probably editing error)
Hit #2 = Boletus gertrudiae, GB accession #AF457407; 881/894 = 98.5% similarity (including 5 gaps)
Hits #3-5 = Boletus violaceofuscus, GB accession Nos. JN563860, JN563859 and AF457403; 97.6 – 98.4% similarity
Hits #6-8 = Boletus separans, GB accession Nos. KF030329, EU232000, AF457404; 96.8 – 97.5% similarity
> In addition to this search, I aligned this sequence with that of my own obs 244683 – a scrawny, unimpressive bolete that was identified as B. nobilis through sequencing. The two are almost a perfect match, 972/973 = 99.9% similarity. Also, alignment of this sequence with Geoff’s obs 255268, identified as Boletus gertrudiae based on it morphology, shows the two traces to be perfectly identical, meaning that the two collections are likely to be conspecific! This notion is further corroborated by the fact that 255268 & 255270 were growing in the immediate vicinity of each other, as evidenced by the time stamps of their in situ photos (taken just a few minutes apart).
> Phylogenetically, Boletus nobilis is a member of Boletus sect. Boletus (Singer, 1986), a.k.a. Boletus sensu stricto and ‘porcini sensu lato’ (Feng et al., 2012), but not a resident of the exclusive B. edulis lineage dubbed ‘porcini sensu stricto’ (Dentinger et al., 2010/Feng et al., 2012).
The seminal porcini study by Dentinger et. al. (2010) showed that there are 4 discrete lineages within the monophyletic ‘porcini sensu lato’; B. nobilis and B. separans are the original members of “Alloboletus”. This lineage has since been expanded to include B. gertrudiae, the exotic B. semigastroideus (formerly Notholepiota areolata), B. violaceofuscus, and a number of other yet to be named entities from southeast Asia.
At this point, questions still remain regarding the possible conspeficity of B. nobilis and B. gertrudiae, suggested by this sequencing effort, and which of the two names will eventually take priority in light of their less than straightforward taxonomic histories.

Thanks for your efforts, Igor!

The sequence will be posted to this obsie soon.

I was all concerned with the wrinkled cap! :)

I don’t see any purplish/lilac tones in this mushroom at all, not even a hint. Have you considered B. nobilis? BTW, thanks for collecting.