Exsudoporus frostii is distributed in the eastern United States from Maine to Georgia, and in the southwest from Arizona extending south to Mexico and Costa Rica.

Although this mushroom is considered edible when thoroughly cooked, it is generally not recommended for consumption because of the risk of confusion with other poisonous red-pored, blue-bruising boletes.

B. frostii may be distinguished from other superficially similar red-capped boletes by differences in distribution, associated tree species, bluing reaction, or morphology.

The species was named by the Unitarian minister John Lewis Russell of Salem, Massachusetts, based on specimens found in Brattleboro, Vermont.

He named the fungus after his friend, fellow amateur American mycologist Charles Christopher Frost, who published a description of the species in his 1874 survey of the boletes of New England.

[4] Bernard Ogilvie Dodge made reference to B. frostii in 1950 during an address to the Mycological Society of America, in which he spoke about the role of the amateur in discovering new species: "They would have informed us all about the man Russell, who named a fine new bolete for his friend Frost, and about the man Frost, who named a fine new bolete for his friend Russell.

[8] In 1945, Rolf Singer described a bolete he found in Florida; although he originally described it as a subspecies of B. frostii,[9] he later considered the differences between the taxa significant enough to warrant publishing Boletus floridanus as a unique species.

[18] Chemical analysis of fresh fruit bodies collected in Mexico showed them to have the following composition: moisture 94.53%; ash 0.323%; dietary fiber 3.024%; fat 0.368%; and protein 1.581%.

[25] Other red-capped boletes include the poisonous B. flammans and B. rubroflammeus; the former grows most commonly under conifers, the latter in association with hardwoods in eastern North America and southern Arizona.

[17] Often confused with Exsudoporus floridanus and E. permagnificus, but the latter species is known only from Europe and Western Asia and always grow in association with oaks and occasionally also with sweet chestnut.

Singer notes that although the physical characteristics between the two taxa may be blurred and are hard to define, the area of origin can reliably distinguish them: E. floridanus is found on shaded lawns and scrubland in open oak stands in non-tropical regions of Florida, typically on grassy or sandy soil, where it fruits between May and October.

[29] Boletus russelli, found in eastern North America, has a red to reddish-brown cap and reticulate stipe, but its pore surface is yellow, and the fruit body does not bruise blue.

[31] Using pure culture techniques, Exsudoporus frostii has been shown to form mycorrhizae with Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana),[30] while a field study confirms a similar association with the oak Quercus laurina.

[33] A 1980 publication tentatively suggested that the fungus was also present in Italy,[34] but the author later determined that the putative E. frostii was actually Boletus siculus (now synonymized into E.

[35] Infection results in necrosis of the mushroom tissue, and a yellow color caused by the formation of large amounts of pigmented aleurioconidia (single-celled conidia produced by extrusion from the conidiophores).