Abstract
The authors of this article describe boletes of the genus Imperator which were collected in southern Moravia (near the village of Ivančice). The collection was published on Facebook in August 2014.
The mushrooms were mailed to the authors by the finder upon request. However, they could not be documented well, nor their macrocharacters studied, due to bad condition in which they arrived; thus they were deposited in the Mycology Department herbarium of the National Museum in Prague under the name of Boletus cf. rhodopurpureus (specimen No.
PRM 924419). A neutron activation analysis of the collected fruit-bodies revealed strikingly lower values of Cl content than those of some other collections of Imperator rhodopurpureus, which fact only underpinned a previous suspicion that this was not I. rhodopurpureus.
A phylogenetic analysis based on a comparison of ITS rDNA sequences of the doubtful collection (EMBL-Bank LT223153) with two other collections of I. rhodopurpureus (EMBL-Bank LT223151 and LT223152) established that the boletes collected are actually I. luteocupreus; indeed, this is the first find of this species recorded from the Czech Republic. In spite of the fact that the Cl concentration levels in fruit-bodies were considered for species identification it remains unclear whether such Cl concentrations in species of the genus Imperator are of any chemo-taxonomic significance: this is yet to be seen from relevant analyses of new specimens in future.