 The mushrooms are edible, and are high in the essential fatty acid linoleic acid.The species was first described scientifically as "Boletus viscosus" by American mycologist Charles Frost in 1874.In 1885, Charles Horton Peck, who had found specimens in pine woods of Albany County, New York, explained that the species name was a taxonomic homonym ("Boletus viscosus" was already in use for another species named by Ventenat in 1863), and so renamed it to "Boletus brevipes".