[1] The type species is Austroboletus dictyotus, a fungus originally described by Karel Bernard Boedijn in 1960 as a member of the genus Porphyrellus.
They delineated a subfamily Austroboletoideae, which contained genera with pitted spores, including Austroboletus, Fistulinella, Mucilopilus and Veloporphyrellus.
[4] Members of the genus have a distinctive stipe marked by a coarse reticulate or lacunar (pitted) pattern—most prominent in species native to the western Pacific.
[6] The caps are usually dry when young, and sometimes sticky in maturity, with a surface texture ranging from smooth to tomentose to scaly.
Microscopically, Austroboletus lacks clamp connections in the hyphae, and the presence of pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia (cystidia on the pore face and edge, respectively) is variable.