Boletellus ananas for the species is therefore "Boletus ananas" M.A. Curtis 1848, the basionym of "Boletellus ananas". "Boletellus ananas", as the type species of the genus "Boletellus", is in section "Boletellus" that Singer based on the scaly, dry cap with red-pink tones, a marginal veil that clasps the stem when immature, and longitudinally ridged spores that are greater than 16 μm long. The genus name "Boletellus" means "small boletus", while the specific epithet "ananas" alludes to the name for pineapple, referring to the pineapple-like pattern of scales on the cap surface. The mushroom is commonly known as the "pineapple bolete". The cap
Boletellus ananas named by Moses Ashley Curtis as "Boletus ananas" in 1848, based on specimens he found near the Santee River, in South Carolina. In 1909, William Murrill described the new genus "Boletellus" and made "Boletellus ananas" the type species. According to Murrill, the taxon "Boletus isabellinus", described by Charles Horton Peck in 1897 from specimens collected in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is a synonym of "B. ananas"; Peck described this species from undeveloped specimens. Wally Snell later doubted Murrill's conclusion in a 1933 publication; he considered the differences in the spore structure too great to consider the species conspecific with "B. ananas",