Cantharellus tuberculosporus

A rare yellow chanterelle of the Himalayan highlands

Cantharellus tuberculosporus is a rare chanterelle of high-elevation Xizang and Sichuan in southwestern China. Its fruiting bodies have a yellow to orange, funnel-shaped cap and decurrent folds that are branched and interconnected. A 2025 account gives a cap of 4 to 8 centimetres with pale-yellow to orange folds. The original description reported tuberculate spores, but the type spores were later found to be smooth, and the 2023 authors regarded the tuberculation as an artefact of drying.

Specialist taxonomy separates the species from the closely related C. cibarius, and the 2025 review separates it from the lookalike C. versicolor by larger fruiting bodies and spores and by its higher-elevation Abies habitat. These are specialist distinctions. They are not a consumer identification key.

A disputed name

Zang described the species in 1980 from a collection made at Baga, Xizang, in 1975. A 2021 phylogenetic paper treated the name as a synonym of C. yunnanensis. The 2023 type-focused study rejected that treatment. The 2025 Chinese survey accepts the species, so the name is not yet settled in general use.

The name has also been applied broadly to marketed yellow chanterelles, including ones called golden chanterelle. Observations and commercial sales under those names cannot be transferred to C. tuberculosporus.

Where and when it grows

The best-documented localities are in China: Baga in Milin County, Linzhi (Nyingchi) Prefecture, the type locality; a recollection about 15 kilometres away, made in 2014; and Basu Town, Changdu (Qamdo) City, where a specimen was collected in July 2024. The 2025 review adds a province-level distribution in Xizang and Sichuan. The sources give no site coordinates, so this page gives none.

The dated collections fall in late July at high-elevation sites. The 2023 study places the 2014 recollection in mixed forest of Pinus densata and oak. The 2025 review places the species in mixed or coniferous forest at about 3,500 to 3,700 metres. Three dated collections do not define a fruiting season, so the evidence supports late-July fruiting at high elevations and nothing wider.

Food status and safety

A China edible-fungi checklist lists the name, and a 2025 checklist for southeast Xizang labels a Milin County voucher as edible. These are checklist entries. No named local culinary tradition, frequency of consumption, preparation method or safety assessment of correctly identified specimens is recorded in the sources read.

No poisonous lookalike is established in the sources. This is not evidence of safety, and a yellow chanterelle appearance is not evidence either. Do not identify or eat a wild chanterelle from a photograph or from this page. The page does not support eating advice or a recipe for this species.

Conservation status

The IUCN assessment (2023) lists the species as Data Deficient, and it describes its distribution and habitat knowledge as incomplete. The 2018 Chinese Red List lists it as Near Threatened. The two classifications conflict and both predate the later taxonomic and field work, so neither is a current estimate of how common the species is.