Enoki (velvet foot)
Flammulina velutipes
The winter mushroom, which fruits when almost nothing else grows. Its wild form (amber cap, velvety foot) is nothing like the white thread of the shops.
Partial shade
Role in permaculture
Growing this mushroom
- Method
- Soft-hardwood logs and stumps (fruiting in cold weather)
- Substrate
- Fresh logs and stumps of fast-growing soft hardwoods: poplar and willow first, also elm, ash, beech, birch, alder. A wood-eating species, mainly a saprophyte, of dead or declining hardwood, on rather acid substrate.
- Where to place it
- Stumps left in place after felling poplar or willow (coppicing, pollarding), or logs stacked in a shaded, humid area, the north side of a hedge, under tree cover, in a dead-wood corner at the edge of a forest garden.
- Period
- Fruiting in the cold season, mainly from November to March, when few other mushrooms or vegetables are available.
- Level
- Intermediate
Steps
- Use freshly cut logs or stumps of hardwood (still-living, not dried-out wood).
- Inoculate with colonised wood dowels (drill, push in, seal with wax) or by notches on a stump.
- Place the logs in shade, in contact with humid soil, sheltered from direct sun; reckon often 6 to 12 months of colonisation.
- Fruiting is triggered by the COLD (autumn-winter, often after the first frosts), a feature that sets the enoki apart from most log mushrooms.
An edible mushroom, traditionally eaten, notably in East Asia. The white enoki sold in shops is the same species, artificially etiolated in darkness. No health claim.
Precautions
DANGER OF DEADLY CONFUSION. The wild form grows in tufts on dead wood exactly like the funeral bell (Galerina marginata), which contains amatoxins and is DEADLY (the same toxins as the death cap, liver damage with symptoms delayed by 6 to 24 h). Decisive differences: the velvet foot has a white spore print, no ring, and a foot markedly velvety brown-black towards the base; the Galerina has a rusty-brown spore print and bears a ring. Never eat a wild harvest without certain identification (make a spore print), and at the slightest doubt, have it validated by a mycologist or a pharmacist. In case of doubt: abstain.
Sources: Paul Stamets, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes) · MycoDB ; INPN / Tela Botanica, écologie et répartition de Flammulina velutipes · Société Mycologique de France, sur la confusion avec Galerina marginata et les amatoxines
Nutritional & medicinal properties
For educational purposes. Not a substitute for medical advice. Effects depend on the form, the dose and personal context.
Precautions & contraindications
To be eaten WELL COOKED. Outbreaks of listeriosis have been linked to raw enoki contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes: the 2020 North American outbreak counted 36 people sick across 17 states, 31 hospitalisations, and 4 deaths (CDC/FDA). Always cook enoki thoroughly; pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised people should not eat it raw. The wild form on wood moreover exposes one to a deadly confusion with the funeral bell (Galerina marginata) (see the cultivation section).
Species & varieties
The best-known species and varieties in France.
Common varieties
Key takeaways
- • Prefers partial shade exposure.
- • Classic companion: Willow.