Pileus fleshy, very convex or broadly convex, glabrous, viscid and shining when moist, variable in color, pale red, crimson or bay red, flesh white; tubes plane or convex in the mass, depressed around the stem, their mouths small, round, pale yellow when young, becoming bright golden yellow; stem equal or slightly thickened toward the base, solid, punctate or minutely squamulose with red or pallid points, pallid or tinged with red; spores oblong fusiform, .0005-.0007 of an inch long, .0002-.00024 broad.

The red dotted boletus is a very variable species. The cap is strongly or slightly convex, smooth and shining, viscid when moist and covered with a thin tenacious pellicle which can be torn away like the skin from an overripe peach. In the young plant the thin margin sometimes extends a little beyond the mass of tubes. In color the cap may be pale red, bright red or crimson, reddish brown or chestnut color. The flesh is whitish, sometimes tinged with yel- low. The tubes are plane or convex in the mass, depressed around the stem, pale yellow when young, becoming bright golden yellow with age. Their mouths are small and round. The stem is rather long and slender for the size of the cap, solid, equal in diameter in all its parts or sometimes slightly thicker at the base. It is marked with numerous small dots or points of a red, brownish or pallid color which at first sight suggests a similarity to the stem of a small specimen of Boletus scaber. The color of the stem may be whitish, pallid or reddish. The species is related to Boletus inflexus Pk. but it differs from it in having its tubes depressed about the stem, in its tube mouths being destitute of red granules and in its larger spores.

The cap is 1-2.5 inches broad; the stem is 1-3 inches long, 2-4 lines thick. It occurs in thin woods in July and August.