Apart from the old joke of "see you tomorrow", you don't understand Enoki mushrooms!

When hearing the word "Enoki mushroom", all the joke-tellers who have been "galloping on the battlefield" for many years will surely smile in sympathy. I don't know when it started, but the bad reputation of "see you tomorrow" and various spoof metaphors have made the skinny Enoki mushroom unbearable.

I once thought that "See you tomorrow" was a unique nickname for enoki mushrooms in the English world, until one day, I accidentally learned that its real nickname is "needle mushroom".

Ah! Enoki mushroom, I almost made a mistake!

Wait, after a moment's thought, you must have discovered that, although the name contains the word "gold", most of the enoki mushrooms on the market are white. What are these little white heads shaking up and down in the hot pot?

What color are Enoki mushrooms?

To understand the color of enoki mushrooms, you must first check its "household registration".

Flammulina velutipes is an important cultivated edible mushroom in my country. The name "Flammulina velutipes" is a commodity name in the market, and it is also called "winter mushroom" in nature. Winter mushroom, as the name suggests, is a kind of mushroom that likes low temperature and often produces mushrooms in winter, so it is also called "frozen mushroom" in some places.

Winter mushrooms are widely distributed in Northeast, Northwest, and North my country. They are not only edible, but also a traditional Chinese medicine. The Flammulina velutipes we eat now is the product of artificial domestication, hybridization, and selection of strains isolated and purified from wild winter mushrooms.

For a long time, due to the morphological similarities, scientists regarded the mushrooms distributed in East Asia as the same species as the European mushrooms, and therefore have been borrowing the foreign scientific name Flammulina velutipes for more than 80 years.

It was not until 2018 that a research team from the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published their latest research results. By sequencing the genes of 81 specimens of the genus Agaricus from East Asia, Europe and North America, they pointed out that the Agaricus edodes in East Asia and the hairy-legged Agaricus in Europe are actually completely different species, and gave the Agaricus edodes or Flammulina velutipes a new scientific name, F. filiformis.

The enoki mushrooms that foolishly "claimed" someone else's ID card finally got a new household registration. Back to the color of the enoki mushrooms, they were indeed golden yellow at the beginning. So, are the "white and thin mushrooms" we have been eating for a long time not real enoki mushrooms?

"Artificially domesticated" white enoki mushrooms

Don't panic. First of all, you can be sure that what you are eating is still Enoki mushrooms, but this kind of Enoki mushrooms is a specially cultivated variety.

(Copyrighted image from the gallery, no permission to reprint)

Some people say that the one in the picture above is the real Flammulina velutipes. Indeed, the white Flammulina velutipes on the market is actually called Silver Enoki Mushroom. It is a white or light yellow improved variety cultivated through hybridization and breeding, and the name of Flammulina velutipes is still used.

Silver needle mushrooms called Flammulina velutipes

(Copyrighted image from the gallery, no permission to reprint)

Before Flammulina velutipes was served on the table, people went through many experiments and efforts. In 1982, the Fujian Sanming Fungus Research Institute selected the first excellent strain in China, "Sanming No. 1", and then hybridized this strain with the Japanese white Flammulina velutipes strain to select the "Hybrid No. 19" that grows fast (short cultivation cycle), is strong (strong disease resistance), and tastes good. It occupied the domestic market at the end of the 20th century.

Therefore, the first Flammulina enoki mushrooms to be cultivated were yellowish in color. After several rounds of cultivation and screening, most of the Flammulina enoki mushrooms you see today have become new edible fungi varieties that can successfully remove yellowness, brighten the skin, and help lose weight.

Will the enoki mushrooms we see tomorrow be the same as today’s?

Finally, let's talk about the old joke of "see you tomorrow". As a fungus, Flammulina velutipes also has a fungal cell wall, the main component of which is chitin. Chitin is also called "chitin polysaccharide", yes, this substance is also found in the powerful crab shell.

Ordinary acids and alkalis have no effect on chitin. Only strong acids can dissolve it. And our stomach acid, haha, is as useless to the chitin of enoki mushrooms as it is to crab shells.

Even so, if you have enough courage to observe the Enoki mushrooms carefully the next day, you will find that after being washed and squeezed by the digestive system, it is just a corpse of Enoki mushrooms without any nutrition...

Flammulina velutipes has rich nutritional value, and has multiple functions such as anti-oxidation and enhancing immunity. It is called "intelligence-enhancing mushrooms" and is affordable. It is a food that looks soft but is tough inside. Please don't laugh at it, just eat it.

References

1. Wang, PM, Liu, XB, Dai, YC et al. Phylogeny and species delimitation of Flammulina: taxonomic status of winter mushroom in East Asia and a new European species identified using an integrated approach [J]. Mycological Progress , 2018, 17:1013–1030. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-018-1409-2

2. Guo Meiying. Production of Flammulina velutipes in China[M]. Beijing: China Agriculture Press, 2000.

3. Guo Meiying, Huang Nianlai. Characteristics of Flammulina velutipes Sanming No.1[J]. Edible Fungi, 1984, 5.

Scientific review: Guo Ting (Institute of Edible Fungi, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences)

Edit: Send a bowl

The article is owned by Shanghai Natural History Museum

Reproduction without permission is prohibited

Do you want your popular science articles to be seen by everyone?

To submit your article, please click [email protected]