First Nature home page...
Text style:
Aa

Aa

Aa
Fungi
Sitemap of www.first-nature.com
Photo-Library
The Bookshop
Amphibians Bats Birds Fish Fungi Insects Mammals (excluding Bats) Reptiles Trees Wildflowers Flyfishing Courses
Identification
Interactive multimedia guide to the Kingdom of Fungi
CD-ROM
Facts
Blog
Forays
Glossary
Safety
Menus
Hallucinogens
Poisoning
Quiz
Fungiramas

Photography

Flammulina velutipes

 

The lovely orange-brown caps of Flammulina velutipes continue fruiting through the winter. Commonly known as Velvet Shank, this is a stump-rotting fungus; it also occurs on standing dead wood.

To see a cluster of these splendid golden-orange caps sprinkled with snow on a crisp winter's morning makes a walk in the cold air very worthwhile indeed.

  The young fruit bodies shown here will press against one another and become distorted as they develop; this is often the case when Velvet Shank grows on fallen timber. On standing dead trees the clusters are usually tiered and, as a result, the caps more regular. Flammulina velutipes is particularly common on dead elm trees (of which there has been no shortage in recent years), but it also occurs on oak, beech and other kinds of hardwood.

The caps from these fungi are edible, and they are now grown commercially in Japan, where they are known as 'Enoko-take'.

Cap

2 to 10 cm across and often distorted because of neighbouring caps in the cluster, these bright orange caps are somewhat darker in the centre.

Slimy in wet weather, the caps dry to a smooth sheen.

Gills

Adnate and broad, the gills are white at first becoming pale yellow as the fruiting body matures.

Stipe

The dark stem is tough and covered in a fine velvety down.

Spore print

White.

Odour/taste

Not distinctive.

Habitat

on stumps and trunks of dead hardwood trees and occasionally on diseased living trees.

Season

From autumn through winter and into early spring.

Occurrence

Fairly common.

Similar species

  1. Kuehneromyces mutabilis, the Brown Stew Fungus, has a similar cap but darker gills and brown spores.

*** CD-ROM Multimedia Guide to Fungi: Available Now ***


Fungi | Reptiles | Bats | Land Mammals | Birds | Fish | Insects | Amphibians | Wild Flowers | Trees
FLYFISHING COURSES | THE BOOKSHOP
Liability
| Email us | Copyright