Medicinal Mushrooms

Salmon salad, Guepinia helvelloides (DC.) Fr.
  Source: Czech Wikipedia

Classification

Kingdom Fungi
Phylum Basidiomycota
Class Basidiomycetes
Order Tremellales
Family Exidiaceae
Genus Guepinia

Guepinia rufa (Jacq.) Beck
Guepinia rufa (DC.) Keissl.
Gyrocephalus rufus (Jacq.) Bref.
Phlogiotis helvelloides (DC.) G.W. Martin
Phlogiotis rufa (Jacq.) Quél.
Tremella helvelloides DC.
Tremella rufa Jacq.
Tremiscus helvelloides (DC.) Donk

Salmon salad
Candied Red Jelly Fungus

Fruiting body: 3-15 cm high, 4-6 cm wide, infundibuloform or ear-shaped with a lobed, flaring margin; red to red/orange to salmon-pink; smooth or slightly wrinkled.
Stem: short, off-center, pallid.
Flesh: elastic; gelatinous; tough when dry.
Spores: hyaline, smooth, oblong to irregularly elliptical with a distinct apiculus, non-amyloid, 9.5-11 x 5-6 µm.
Spore print: white.
Habitat and habitat: gregarious to caespitose; on rotting wood or on the ground under conifers. Found in Europe and North America, infrequent but widespread. Has been reported in Turkey (Türkoğlu et al., 2007).
Season: Spring, autumn.
Edibility: Edible.

Picture source: Italian Wikipedia

Polysaccharides extracted from the mycelial culture of G. helvelloides and administered intraperitoneally into white mice at a dosage of 300 mg/kg inhibited the growth of Sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich solid cancers by 100% (Ohtsuka et al., 1973).

Web

There's a gallery of pics of G. helvelloides in various poses at BioImages.
Mushroom Expert has additional information.

References

Ohtsuka S, Ueno S, Yoshikumi C, Hirose F, Ohmura Y, Wada T, Fujii T, Takahashi E.
Polysaccharides having an anticarcinogenic effect and a method of producing them from species of Basidiomycetes.
UK Patent 1331513, 26 September 1973.

Türkoğlu A, Kaşik G, Öztürk C, Doğan HH.
New records for the macrofungi of Turkey.
Turkish Journal of Botany. 2007 31(5):471-5.

Last modified: 17-Aug-2008

The hedgehog mushroom, Hydnum repandum L.
  Credit: Pau Cabot
  Source: Wikimedia common

Classification

Kingdom Fungi
Phylum Basidiomycota
Class Basidiomycetes
Order Cantharellales
Family Hydnaceae
Genus Hydnum

Dentinum repandum (L.) Gray
Dentinum rufescens (Schaeff.) Gray
Fungus erinaceus Vaill.
Hydnum album Pers.
Hydnum aurantium Raf.
Hydnum bicolor Raddi
Hydnum bulbosum Raddi
Hydnum clandestinum Batsch
Hydnum diffractum Berk.
Hydnum flavidum Schaeff.
Hydnum medium Pers.
Hydnum pallidum Raddi
Hydnum rufescens Schaeff.
Hydnum washingtonianum Ellis & Everh.
Hypothele repanda (L.) Paulet
Sarcodon abietinus R. Heim [as 'abietinum']
Sarcodon repandus (L.) Quél.
Tyrodon repandus (L.) P. Karst.

Hedgehog mushroom
Kanoshita (Japanese)

Cap: 3-10 cm diameter, convex, becoming nearly plane, disc sometimes depressed; margin inrolled at first, lobed to undulate; surface dry, smooth to slightly scaly, cream to buff-orange, bruising to orange-brown.
Flesh: thick, white, brittle, bruising buff-orange, crumbly; odor and taste mild.
Hymenophore: spines 0.2-0.6 cm long, brittle, cream-colored, bruising orange-brown, sometimes decurrent.
Stem: 2-7 cm tall, 1.5-2.5 cm thick, equal to enlarged at the base; attachment central to eccentric; surface dry, smooth, cream to buff-yellow, bruising orange-brown; veil absent.
Spores: 6-9 x 5.5-7 µm, hyaline, nearly round, smooth.
Spore print: white.
Habitat: scattered to gregarious under conifers or occasionally with hardwoods.

A cytotoxic diepoxide named repandiol ((2R,3R,8R,9R)-4,6-decadiyne- 2,3:8,9-diepoxy-1,10-diol, see below) was isolated from a methanol extract of Hydnum repandum fruit bodies (Takahashi et al., 1992).

An extract of the culture mycelia showed 70% inhibition against Sarcoma 180 solid cancer in mice, while extracts from the fruit bodies showed 90% inhibition against both Sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich solid cancer in mice (Ohtsuka et al., 1973). Furthermore, the compound repandiol described above showed potent cytotoxic activity against a variety of tumor cell types, especially colon adenocarcima cells, for which its IC₅₀ is 0.30 (Takahashi et al., 1992).

In a study of antimicrobial activity using the disk-diffusion method, it was shown that a chloroform extract of the hedgehog mushroom had mild antibiotic activity against Enterobacter aerogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis and Bacillus subtilis, while the ethanol extract had mild activity against only Bacillus subtilis (Yamach and Bilgili, 2006).

Links

Mushroom expert

References

Ohtsuka S, Ueno S, Yoshikumi C, Hirose F, Ohmura Y, Wada T, Fujii T, Takahashi E.
Polysaccharides having an anticarcinogenic effect and a method of producing them from species of Basidiomycetes.
UK Patent 1331513, 26 September 1973.

Takahashi A, Endo T, Nozoe S.
Repandiol, A new cytotoxic diepoxide from the mushrooms Hydnum repandum and H. repandum varalbum.
Chem Pharm Bull. 1992 40(12):3181-4.

Yamach M, Bilgili F.
Antimicrobial activities of fruit bodies and/or mycelial cultures of some mushroom isolates
Pharm Biol. 2006 44(9):660-7.

Last modified: 17-Aug-2008

Picture credit: Czech Wikipedia

Synonyms

Merulius aureus Fr.
Merulius croceus (Pers.) Duby
Merulius vastator Fr.
Plicatura aurea (Fr.) Parmasto
Serpula aurea (Fr.) P. Karst.
Xylomyzon croceum Pers.
Xylomyzon solare Pers.

Description

Fruit body: 5-15 cm broad, approximately 2 mm thick; a spreading, wrinkled crust on the underside of logs; bright orange to golden brown, paler yellow-gold at margin; surface extensively folded and wrinkled.
Spores: cylindrical, smooth; 3.5-4.5 x 1.0-2.0 µm.
Spore deposit: white to yellowish.
Habitat and habitat: on undersides of dead, bark-less conifer logs. Found in Europe and North America. August-October.
Edibility: Not edible.

Polysaccharides extracted from the mycelial culture of P. aureus and administered intraperitoneally into white mice at a dosage of 300 mg/kg inhibited the growth of Sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich solid cancers by 100% (Ohtsuka et al., 1973).

References

Ohtsuka S, Ueno S, Yoshikumi C, Hirose F, Ohmura Y, Wada T, Fujii T, Takahashi E.
Polysaccharides having an anticarcinogenic effect and a method of producing them from species of Basidiomycetes.
UK Patent 1331513, 26 September 1973.

 Last modified: 13-Aug-2008

Sclerotium of 'native bread',  Laccocephalum mylittae.
Photo credit: © Photographer: Heino Lepp. From the Australian National Botanic Gardens website.

Polyporus mylittae Cooke & Massee
Polyporus mylittae Sacc.
Polyporus minormylittae
Mylitta australis (anamorph)
Notihydnum australe (anamorph)

Native bread (Australian aboriginal)
Blackfellows' Bread
Lei Wan (Chinese)

Laccocephalum mylittae is used in traditional Chinese medicine as an antihelminthic (Wang and Zhu, 1989). The sclerotium were eaten by aboriginals in Australia as a food source, hence the common name Native bread.

Anti-inflammatory activity

Chinese researchers isolated a polysaccharide they named S-4001, shown to be a (1→3)-β-D- glucan with some (1→6) linkages. Administration of S-4001 significantly increased anti-inflammatory activity  in a variety of animal models. Reported experimental effects of S-4001 (all from Wang and Zhu, 1989):

- inhibitory action on leukocyte migration induced by intraperitoneal injection of carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) in rats
- significant increase of corticosterone in plasma, but with no increase in ascorbic acid content in the adrenals of rats
- increase in clearance of Congo red from mice blood
- potentiation of the immunohemolysis reaction in 615 mice (a mouse leukemia model)

Blackfellow's Bread (by Valda Dedman)
Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens Fungus of the Month, April 2004
Naturebase - (Western Australian) Fungus of the Month, December 2007
Museum Victoria, Underground fungus

References

Macfarlane TD, Kuo J, Hilton RN.
Structure of the giant sclerotium of Polyporus mylittae.
Trans Brit Myco Soc. 1978 71:359-65.

Orchard AE, May TW, Young T. 2003.
Fungi of Australia 2B.
CSIRO Publishing, Australian Biological Resources Study.
Google Books excerpt

Wang SF.
[Cultural comparison of 4 strains of Polyporus mylittae]
Zhong Yao Tong Bao. 1985 10(1):7-9. Chinese.

Wang WJ, Zhu XY.
[The antiinflammatory and immunostimulating activities of S-4001--a polysaccharide isolated from Lei Wan (Polyporus mylitiae)]
Yao Xue Xue Bao. 1989 24(2):151-4. Chinese.

 Last modified: 01-Aug-2008