English: Lion's mane; Bearded tooth fungus; Bearded hedgehog;
Hedgehog mushroom.
Name: both Hericium and erinaceus in Latin mean hedgehog.
German: Igel-Stachelbart.
Chinese: hóutóugū; Jyutping, meaning "monkey-head mushroom".
Japanese: yamabushitake; Katakana.
Similar species: Hericium americanum,
Hericium coralloides; Donkia pulcherrima, Radulomyces copelandii; some Sarcodontia.
Region: North America, Eurasia.
Habitat: able to withstand cold temperatures and frost conditions.
Content: phytochemicals, polysaccharides, β-glucan, hericenones, erinacines; essential oil, with 77 aroma and flavor compounds, including 26% hexadecanoic acid, 13% linoleic acid, 9% phenylacetaldehyde, 3% benzaldehyd, 2-methyl-3-furanthiol, 2-ethylpyrazine, 2,6-diethylpyrazine; ergosterol; 57% carbohydrates, 4% fat, 22% protein.
Ecology: hosts include maple, ash, oaks, eucalyptus, Aamerican beech; live oak, California black oak, blue oak, valley oak.
Use: culinary, in gourmet cooking; medicinal.
BotanyFungus; grows in a single clump with dangling spines longer than 1 centimetre; late summer and autumn; saprophytic, growing on tree wounds, causing a white pocket rot. Decayed tissue becomes spongy and eventually disintegrates to form a cavity, maybe a tree parasite, indicating an endophytic habitat; lives 20 to 40 years.
Fruit bodies: large, 5 to 40 cm diameter; irregular, bulbous tubercules; dominated by crowded, hanging, spore-producing spines, 1 to 5 cm long.
Hyphes: monomitic, amyloid; composed of thin- to thick-walled hyphae that are approximately 3–15 μm (microns) wide; contain clamped septa and gloeoplerous elements; with oily, resinous substances, as gloeocystidia.
Basidia: 25 to 40 μm long and 5 to 7 μm wide; contain 4 spores each; possess a basal clamp.
Spores: white; amyloid; 5 to 7 μm long, 4 to 5 μm wide; subglobose to short ellipsoid; surface is smooth to finely roughened; stay viable for more than seven years; can be stored under anaerobic conditions; germination requires 30 to 52 hours, with success rate of 32 to 54%.
Mating system: bifactorially heterothallic; monokaryotic mycelium growth is slower than dikaryotic growth; low percentage of monokaryotic cultures yield fruitbodies; monokaryotic fruitbodies are smaller than dikaryotic fruitbodies; producing fusoid to subglobose chlamydospores of 6 to 8 x 8 by 10 μm.