Flammulina velutipes Pingshan

Flammulina velutipes is a specialty of Pingshan County, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province. Flammulina velutipes consists of vegetative organs (mycelium) and reproductive organs (fruiting bodies). (1) Mycelium is germinated from spores. Under artificial culture conditions, hyphae are usually white and fluffy, with septa and branches, and many hyphae gather together to form mycelium. Different from other edible fungi, when the mycelium grows to a certain stage, it will form a large number of single-celled pollen spores (also called conidia), which can germinate into single-celled Flammulina velutipes filaments or binucleate hyphae under suitable conditions. It has been found in experiments that the number of pollen spores in the mycelium stage of Flammulina velutipes is related to the quality of Flammulina velutipes. The quality of strains with more pollen spores is poor, and the base of the stalk is dark. ⑵ The main function of fruiting body is to produce spores and reproduce offspring. The fruiting body of Flammulina velutipes consists of cap, pleat and stalk, most of which grow in bundles, and the meat is soft and elastic. The cap is spherical or oblate, with a diameter of 1.5 ~ 7 cm. When it is young, it is spherical, gradually spreading out, and when it is over-mature, the edge folds upward. There is a thin layer of colloid on the surface of the cap, which is sticky when wet, yellow-white to yellow-brown, white in meat, thick in the center, thin in edge, white or ivory in pleat, sparse, different in length, and free or curved from the stalk. The stipe is central, hollow and cylindrical, slightly curved, 3.5 ~ 15 cm long and 0.3 ~ 1.5 cm in diameter. The stipe is connected at the base, and the upper part is fleshy (it is also said in some books that the stipe is fibrous and gelatinous), and the lower part is leathery, with dense dark brown short villi on the surface. The basidiospores are born on the solid layer of the fungus pleats, and the spores are cylindrical and colorless.
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