Bothia is a fungal genus in the family Boletaceae. A monotypic genus, it contains the single species Bothia castanella, a bolete mushroom first described scientifically in 1900 from collections made in New Jersey. Found in the eastern United States, Costa Rica, China, and Taiwan, it grows in a mycorrhizal association with oak trees. Its fruit body is chestnut brown, the cap is smooth and dry, and the underside of the cap has radially elongated tubes. The spore deposit is yellow-brown. The edibility of the mushroom is unknown. Historically, its unique combination of morphological features resul
GENUS
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Bothia is a fungal genus in the family Boletaceae. A monotypic genus, it contains the single species Bothia castanella, a bolete mushroom first described scientifically in 1900 from collections made in New Jersey. Found in the eastern United States, Costa Rica, China, and Taiwan, it grows in a mycorrhizal association with oak trees. Its fruit body is chestnut brown, the cap is smooth and dry, and the underside of the cap has radially elongated tubes. The spore deposit is yellow-brown. The edibility of the mushroom is unknown. Historically, its unique combination of morphological features resulted in the transfer of B. castanella to six different Boletaceae genera. Molecular phylogenetic analysis, published in 2007, demonstrated that the species was genetically unique enough to warrant placement in its own genus.
==Taxonomy== {{cladogram|align=left|title= |clade= {{clade |style=font-size:75%;line-height:75% |label1= |1={{clade |1= }} }} |caption=Phylogeny of B. castanella and related boletus based on nuclear large subunit (LSU) ribosomal DNA sequences. }} The bolete was first named Boletinus castanellus by American mycologist Charles Horton Peck in 1900. The type was collected in New Jersey by botanist Edward Sterling. William Alphonso Murrill transferred it to Boletinellus in 1909; his generic concept of Boletinus included a ring on the stipe. Rolf Singer placed it in Gyrodon in 1938, while Wally Snell and Esther Dick thought the species to be more appropriately placed in Xerocomus, and transferred it to that genus in 1958. Alexander H. Smith and Harry D. Thiers moved it to Suillus in their 1964 treatment of North American species. In more recent history (1996), it has been moved to Chalciporus. Snell and Dick's Boletinus squarrosoides (later moved by different authors to Phylloporus, Xerocomus, and Chalciporus) is a facultative synonym (based on a different type) of B. castanella. In their original 1936 publication, they compared the two species, and noted that Boletinus squarrosoides differed from B. castanellus by "reddish brown color, terete scaliness, and yellow colors of the flesh, tubes and stipe". By 1958, after having examined additional collections, they realized that the two species were conspecific and represented morphological variations of each other.
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