Notes on Boletes. XIII

Abstract

On a previous occasion (5, p. 375-377), we noted the very unusual occurrence of Suillus granulatus (L. ex Fr.) Kuntze subsp. Snellii Singer and S. subluteus (Pk.) Snell apud Slipp & Snell growing in pure stands of Pinus rigida on Cape Cod, Mass., in very rainy weather. We have a similar report with regard to the former species, except that the weather conditions had been only moderately wet instead of unusually rainy. The situation was a grassy roadside, again on Cape Cod in North Falmouth not far from Old Silver Beach in September, 1957. The trees up the bank and making up the woods were pitch pines 15-25 years old with a sprinkling of oaks, except for one interruption of 100 yards or more, which was only oaks except for one 25-year-old white pine in about the middle. Over a distance of a half-mile of this grassy roadside were found a half-dozen boleti that one would expect in association with the oaks and pitch pines, but the noteworthy occurrence was 100 or more carpophores of S. granulatus subsp. Snellii. A few of the specimens were in their expected place near the single white pine, and the remaining scores were rather evenly distributed along the two stretches of pitch pine entirely devoid of white pine. In September, 1959, at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the first author found the same subspecies under spruce. The stand was young, thick with seedlings and young trees up to 5 feet high, with no balsam firs as far as observed and without a single white pine. We find it difficult to explain the first of these situations. Most of the fruit bodies were far from the only white pine and it is very doubtful that white pines ever grew in quantity in this spot. White pine probably never grew in stands of more than a few trees anywhere on Cape Cod, at least east of Buzzard's Bay. Suillus granulatus subsp. Snellii in the stand of young spruce is more easily explained if we make a guess-namely, that the area was originally