Grafton was the best for new mushrooms on 7/9/05.
I found about 10 Bolete of one type. They had a thick stem. The largest had a 5" cap that was 1.5" thick. The stem was 6" high and 1.5" thick, at the thickest point. It has all the characteristics of a King except for the strange wine colored highlights.
On 7/10 I received a message from James
Tunney, of the West PA Mushroom Club forum and he thinks this looks like
Boletus separans aka
Xanthoconium separans. My name for it will be Wine-stain Bolete. I checked the characteristics of this species in a
guide and I tend to agree with him. If you think it is something else,
please let me know.
I noticed this and several other larger specimens were heavy in the cap where
they absorbed some recent rain. Note the brown spots and bugs on the
specimen above. Within hours the cap started to turn to mush. In two
days the mature specimens' caps liquefied. This reminds me of people that
are against collecting mushrooms in plastic bags. They claim the mushrooms
self destruct if kept in plastic bags. It is possible that the mushrooms
already started to self destruct when they absorbed the rain water, loaded with
spores, into the pores of their caps. The young specimens were not top
heavy and kept quite well.
Here is a younger specimen:
Young #2
Young #3
Young #4
Young #5
More pictures here.