Tylopilus alboater  Tylopilus alboater, called the black velvet bolete, by some, is a bolete fungus in the family Boletaceae. The species is found in North America east of the Rocky Mountains, and in eastern Asia, including China, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. A mycorrhizal species, it grows solitarily, scattered, or in groups on the ground usually under deciduous trees, particularly oak, although it has been recorded from deciduous, coniferous, and mixed forests. The fruit bodies have a black to grayish-brown cap that measures up to in diameter. The caps of young specimens have a velvety texture and are covered with a whitish to gray powdery coating; this texture and coating is gradually lost as the mushroom matures, and the cap often develops cracks. The pores on the underside of the cap are small and pinkish. The stem is bluish purple to black, and measures up to long by thick. Both the pore surface and the whitish cap flesh will stain pink to reddish gray, and eventually turn black after being cut or injured. The mushroom is edible, and generally considered one of the best edible "Tylopilus" species. The species was first described in 1822 as "Boletus alboater" by Lewis David de Schweinitz from specimens he collected in North Carolina. Elias Magnus Fries sanctioned this name in his 1821 "Systema Mycologicum". The species was one of several "Boletus" species that Otto Kuntze transferred to "Suillus" in his 1898 "Revisio Generum Plantarum". American mycologist William Alphonso Murrill transferred it to the genus "Tylopilus" in 1909. In 1931, French mycologist Jean-Edouard Gilbert transferred the species to his newly created genus "Porphyrellus", but this name has since been subsumed into "Tylopilus". In 1875, Charles Horton Peck described "Boletus nigrellus" from specimens he collected in Sand Lake, New York. Murrill reduced this name to synonymy with "T. alboater" in 1916, and noted that Peck's description was made from young material obtained "before the white tubes had been colored by mature spores". Several later authorities have treated Peck's species as a synonym of "Tylopilus alboater"; this synonymy, however, is not indicated by either of the taxonomic authorities Index Fungorum or MycoBank.