Weeping cedar butter dish (Suillus plorans)
Systematics:
- Department: Basidiomycota (Basidiomycetes)
- Subdivision: Agaricomycotina (Agaricomycetes)
- Class: Agaricomycetes (Agaricomycetes)
- Subclass: Agaricomycetidae
- Order: Boletales
- Family: Suillaceae (Oily)
- Genus: Suillus (Oily)
- Species: Suillus plorans (Weeping Cedar Butter)
The cedar oil cap reaches 3-15 cm in diameter. At a young age, it has a hemispherical shape, later it becomes cushion, sometimes with a tubercle, fibrous. The color of the cap is brown. In wet weather, it is greasy, but dries very quickly and becomes waxy and fibrous.
The flesh of the cedar butter dish is yellow or orange, blue in the cut. The mushroom has a fruity-almond smell, it tastes slightly sour. The tubules are orange-brown, olive-ocher, or off-yellow.
The pores of the cedar oiler are painted in the same color as the tubes. They secrete droplets of a milky-whitish liquid, which, when dried, forms brown spots.
Brownish spore powder.
The leg of a cedar oiler is 4-12 cm high, and 1-2.5 cm thick, has a thick base that tapers upwards. A solid or wavy ocher-brown surface gives off milky drops and is covered with grains that turn black over time.
Marinated cedar boletus is excellent (usually caps peeled from the skin). Butterlets are good both fried and in soups.
Regions and places of growth. The very name of this mushroom suggests that it grows in coniferous and cedar groves. Most of all cedar oil is in dry forest and lichen pine forest. Butterlets breed more readily among small coniferous growths and in new plantings. These mushrooms are quite often found in Siberia and the Far East – with Siberian and Korean cedars and dwarf cedar. This is the most common type of butterdish in Siberia in general. It grows in oak-cedar, cedar-broad-leaved, cedar-spruce and fir-cedar forests under the Korean cedar, in August – September. Most abundant in forests on the southern slopes.
Collection season. The oil is collected from summer to autumn. Pine flowering is a sure sign – it's time for a cedar oil can.
Edible.
