A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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slippery jack
The slippery jack is a bolete of pine woods with a chestnut-brown cap covered in a thick layer of slime, pale yellow pores underneath, and a distinct ring on the stem with dark dots above it. The slime is the point: it is slippery, it collects pine needles and grit, and the skin is usually peeled before cooking because it does not agree with everyone.
Etymology
The English name is for the slime and the Jack is the generic English habit of giving an ordinary man’s name to a common thing, as in jackdaw, jack pine, and jack-o’-lantern. The Latin species name means, roughly, greasy, and the genus name means ox mushroom, which is where the whole word bolete comes from.
Notes
It grows only with pine, and it followed pine plantations around the world, so it now fruits in New Zealand, Australia, southern Africa, and South America wherever European pines were planted. In eastern Europe, it is one of the standard mushrooms of the season, gathered in quantity and dried or pickled, and the peeling of the caps is a familiar kitchen-table job.