A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1133 entries
velvet shank
Velvet shank is the wild form of Flammulina, a squat orange-brown mushroom with a sticky cap and a dark velvety stem, growing in dense clusters on dead and dying hardwood, especially elm and willow. It fruits through the winter, often in frost and under snow, when there is almost nothing else about. The cultivated form of the same fungus is sold as enoki and looks nothing like it.
Etymology
The English name is for the stem, which is furred and darkens to near-black at the base. The Japanese name, enoki, comes at the same fungus based on where it grows rather than what it feels like, and the Latin species name means velvet-footed, agreeing with the English.
Notes
It is one of very few fungi that fruits in freezing weather and it contains proteins that stop ice crystals from growing, the same trick used by some fish and insects. The cultivated version is grown in the dark with raised carbon dioxide so the stems stretch and stay pale, which is why the supermarket bundle and the log in the woods are difficult to believe are the same organism.