Not a fungiphobe, I eat wild mushrooms myself, but am double-plus extra careful with buttons… If I’m not 110% sure, it gets tossed. [The old 'if in doubt, throw it out' advice.] It sounds like you know what you’re doing though… so disregard my carping.

Peg & Mom… not to worry. Wild mushrooms are very safe as long as you’re careful and cautious. I’ve eaten them for 50 years or so… and I’m still here.

Seriously though, boletes have pores (looks like a dense sponge) and not gills, and so are easily distinguished from things such as amanitas. Plus, even when young you can readily see pores versus gills in, for example, a veiled mushroom (like an amanita ‘button’). Also, boletes that do not stain blue or have red on the stalks are edible. We have found both queens and kings before, too, and are familiar with the genus in general.

Incidentally (mom, don’t read this) we DID actually find a lot of amanitas in the area–of course the muscarias above–but also what may have been an ocreata, the really poisonous one (called “destroying angel” because they are deadly poisonous and pure white).