Maitake | Grifola frondosa

Description

Commonly known as Maitake, or Hen of the Woods in the West, Grifola frondosa is one of the most popular edible AND medicinal mushrooms on the planet. Known as “the dancing mushroom” in Japan, Maitake has been a foragers’ delight for centuries but commercial cultivation and home growers have brought this once rare and sought-after mushroom to kitchens around the World.

[description from mushroomexpert.com]

Ecology: Weakly parasitic on living oaks and other hardwoods; also saprobic on decaying wood; causing a white butt rot; fruiting near the bases of trees; often reappearing in the same place in subsequent years; summer and fall; widely distributed east of the Rocky Mountains, rare in the west. The illustrated and described collections are from Illinois.

Fruiting Body: 15–40 cm across; 10–30 cm high; composed of multiple caps in a rosette, sharing a branched, stemlike structure.

Individual Caps: 3–14 cm across; more or less fan-shaped or deltoid; dark to pale gray-brown (often with vague concentric zones); yellowing with old age; finely velvety or bald; with wavy margins.

Pore Surface: Running down the stem, often nearly to the base; lavender gray when young, becoming white and, with age, staining yellowish; not bruising; with 1–3 angular to slot-like or nearly tooth-like pores per mm; tubes 1–3 mm deep.

Stem Structure: Branched; whitish; tough; often off-center.

Flesh: Firm; white; unchanging when sliced.

Odor and Taste: Mild; pleasant.

Chemical Reactions: KOH negative on flesh and surfaces. Iron salts negative on cap and flesh.

Spore Print: White.

Microscopic Features: Spores 4–6 x 3–4 µm; ellipsoid; smooth; hyaline in KOH, often with one large oil droplet; inamyloid. Basidia 25–30 x 6–8 µm; clavate; 4-sterigmate. Hymenial cystidia not found. Hyphal system dimitic. Clamp connections present on generative hyphae; absent on skeletal hyphae.