Fungus Fact Friday

Tagged: cultivation

growing mushrooms (intentionally)

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#071: Flammulina velutipes, The Velvet Foot or Enoki

It’s often said that you can tell how edible a mushroom is by the number of names it has. This concept certainly applies to the edible Flammulina velutipes, which goes by the common names Enokitake (and the shortened form Enoki), Velvet Foot, Winter Mushroom, and Golden Mushroom, as well as many other derivatives and regional names (if you’re outside the United States, you probably call it something else!). Another reason the species has so many names is because it looks very different in the wild than it does in the grocery store: in the wild, it grows as an orange umbrella-shaped mushroom with a black fuzzy stipe, but when cultivated it grows as a pale thin needle-shaped (or perhaps spaghetti-shaped) mushroom with a tiny pileus. I generally use the names F. velutipes, Velvet Foot, and Enoki, since each one emphasizes a different physical aspect of the mushroom.

#002: Agaricus bisporus 13

Fungus Fact

#002: Agaricus bisporus

Agaricus bisporus accounts for about 90% of mushroom production in the United States, and 40% worldwide.  bisporus is the classic grocery store mushroom.  It goes by a variety of common names, including: “button mushroom,” “white mushroom,” “crimini,” and “portabella” (there are a variety of spellings for portabella).  That’s right, all of these are actually the same mushroom!  Crimini and portabella mushrooms come from a more flavorful brown strain of A. bisporus.  Portabellas are exactly the same strain as criminis but the mushrooms have been allowed to mature.  A. bisporus is commercially cultivated in large indoor facilities.  It is a secondary decomposer, so the substrate it is to be grown on needs to be composted first and then purified of the primary decomposers.  The growers then purchase “spawn” to inoculate the substrate with A. bisporus.  The spawn consists of A.bisporus mycelium growing on cereal grain.  The mycelium will grow through the...