From: Halling RE, M Nuhn, T Osmundson, N Fechner, JM Trappe, K Soytong, D Arora, DS Hibbett, M Binder. 2012. Affinities of the Boletus chromapes group to Royoungia and the description of two new genera, Harrya and Australopilus. Australian Systematic Botany 25: 418–431.
As noted above, H. chromapes has been sufficiently described and well illustrated. Coker and Beers (1943) noted that the pink scabers are sometimes distributed on a reticulum (see below under A. palumanus and Fig. 2A). According to Wolfe and Bougher (1993), the holotype of T. cartagoensis differed from H. chromapes (as Tylopilus) in the pigmentation of the pileus and several microscopic features, evaluated by numerical taxonomic methods. Originally described from one collection on the western slope of Volcan Irazu, Halling and Mueller (2005) illustrated and described T. cartagoensis (in Leccinum) as occurring routinely in the Cordillera Talamanca and at Volcan Poas in Costa Rica, and noted that it was often smaller in stature, sometimes less pink in the pileus, but otherwise scarcely differed from H. chromapes. The fine pink scabers on the stipe surface, the intense chrome yellow stipe base and spore features are the same. In our analyses, a specimen from Costa Rica originally determined as T. cartagoensis (TWO996) is nested among several of H. chromapes, and that specimen fits the circumscription as outlined by Wolfe and Bougher (1993), but pseudocystidia are never present. Thus, we accept T. cartagoensis as a synonym of H. chromapes and as another example of clinal variation as noted by Halling et al. (2012), and in papers cited therein. Analogous results were observed with Costa Rican materials of Sutorius eximius.
Habit, habitat, distribution
Reported or observed among litter, on soil in forests associated with conifers, Betulaceae and Quercus in North America, including eastern Canada south to Georgia, Alabama, west to Michigan and Mississippi. In Costa Rica with Quercus, in the Cordillera Talamanca, Poas and Irazu volcanoes. In China with the Fagaceae and Pinaceae.