E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Summary:
Features include 1) large size, 2) an orange-red cap that is bald or nearly so, 3) white unchanging cap flesh, 4) whitish to pale olive brown pores that bruise yellow-brown, 5) a stem with brown to blackish scabers that stains blue especially toward base, 6) growth under conifers, and 7) microscopic characters including orange-brown pigment globules in the cap cuticle hyphae in Melzer''s reagent.

Leccinum ponderosum is found in WA, OR, and ID, (Bessette). It appears on foray lists from BC.

Cap:
9-30cm, convex, becoming broadly convex to nearly flat when old; orange-red to dull brick-red; dry, bald or nearly so; margin "with thin flaps of sterile tissue at least when young", (Bessette), 10-30cm, ferruginous-red; soon viscid, (Smith(4)), 10-30cm, obtuse to convex when young, with appendiculate margin, expanding to broadly convex to nearly flat; ferruginous red ("Kaiser-brown" to "vinaceous-rufous" or "rufous") and when dried dull brick red; subviscid when young, more viscid when old, bald to appressed-fibrillose, (Smith(38))

Flesh:
"white, not staining when exposed or bruised", (Bessette), white, when cut not changing appreciably, (Smith(4)), "white when cut and not changing appreciably, but as dried mostly merely buff-color throughout pileus and stipe but with a few gray streaks", (Smith(38))

Pores:
2-3 per mm, round to angular; whitish at first, becoming dingy whitish to pale olive brown when old, "slowly staining yellowish to orange-brown when bruised"; tube layer 0.8-2cm thick, typically depressed near stem when old, (Bessette), "young pores pallid to avellaneous", staining ochraceous where lightly bruised; tube layer 1-2cm thick, pallid, (Smith(4)), minute; "pallid to avellaneous when young, staining ochraceous where lightly bruised"; tube layer 1-2cm thick (in young caps), "adnate-subdecurrent, dingy clay color as dried", (Smith(38))

Stem:
7-15cm x 2-3cm, widening downward, solid; "whitish, with brown to fuscous scabers, staining blue when bruised, especially toward the base"; dry; partial veil and annulus absent, (Bessette), 8-16cm x 2-3cm at top, enlarging to 5-9cm at base, solid, hard; apex pale buff, when fresh often flushed reddish like the cap, stem "where handled staining blue (entire base finally) and in drying becoming yellow to olive-yellow"; "with avellaneous to fuscous points and squamules arising from a pallid cottony rather well-developed under-layer", ''the ornamentation drying near "snuff brown" and appearing as irregular patches of appressed material'', (Smith(38))

Odor:
not distinctive (Bessette)

Taste:
not distinctive (Bessette)

Microscopic:
spores 14-17 x 4.5-6 microns, fusoid [spindle-shaped], smooth, ochraceous, (Bessette), spores 14-17 x 4.5-6 microns, hyphae of cap cuticle 4-12 microns wide, in Melzer''s reagent "the content rounding into distinct globules in some"; caulocystidia mostly clavate, (Smith(4)), spores 14-17 x 4.5-5.5(6) microns, fusoid [spindle-shaped], smooth, tan in Melzer''s reagent, ochraceous in KOH; basidia 4-spored, 18-24 x 9-12 microns, often with a large colorless globule; pleurocystidia "36-45 x 8-13 microns, fusoid-ventricose with neck often irregular, apices acute to subacute", content colorless or brownish, cheilocystidia 20-32 x 7-12 microns, clavate to clavate-mucronate, ochraceous in KOH; caulocystidia (30)40-70 x (8)10-18 microns, mostly clavate, content smoky ochraceous in KOH; cap cutis with hyphae of epicutis 4-12 microns wide, "the end-cells not distinctively differentiated (at most merely somewhat cystidioid), walls smooth or very rarely minutely asperulate, cells readily disarticulating, cells mostly more than 5 times longer than wide, content brownish in KOH and pigment separating in rather indistinct globules, in Melzer''s with large medium and small pigment globules red to orange-red in color"; hyphae of context near subcutis with yellow to orange content when revived in Melzer''s reagent; clamp connections none, (Smith(38))

Spore Deposit:
brown (Bessette)