The intense red colors of the stipe and pores, along with a pileus that starts out with red brown pigmentation and then quickly assumes yellow colors, and a non-reticulate stipe (sometimes a reticulum occurs along a few millimeters at the stipe apex) are a distinctive set of field characters. A rapid bluing reaction from bruising is also diagnostic. The species is known in Costa Rica from two sites near Jardín in the northern Talamancas (pers. obs.) and Volcan Poas (M. Mata, pers. com.). Prior to these collections, only the mature basidiomata were known. DNA sequence data published by Wu et al (2014), place this species in a separate clade (Wu et al 2015).