Auricularia villosula

Overview

Auricularia villosula is an Asian wood-ear fungus. Its gelatinous, ear-shaped fruit bodies are fawn to buff or orange-yellow when fresh, often folded, with obvious folds on the fertile surface. Dried, they become thin and grey to vinaceous brown. In Chinese it is called 短毛木耳, which translates as short-haired wood ear, and the English name in this entry follows that literal rendering.

The fungus grows on fallen broadleaf trunks and branches and occasionally on living broadleaf trees. It belongs to the same genus as the cultivated black wood ear, Auricularia heimuer, and the two are hard to tell apart in the field. The species was separated from its relatives by microscopic study and phylogenetic analysis, not by appearance, and the authors who described it state that identification relies on those methods.

Food use and cultivation

The 2021 Chinese catalogue of edible and medicinal fungi lists the species as edible under its Chinese name, and the 2026 catalogue lists it again. These are published Chinese food-status records. They are not a universal regulatory approval for every market.

A 2018 study from Erdos in Inner Mongolia reports that local people eat the species and that it is popular there. The same authors grew its fruit bodies in a cultivation study, collected from a shrub host, Artemisia ordosica, that they describe as unusual for this fungus. Their specimen's internal tissue also differed from the earlier species description, so that host record should be read with care.

The sources reviewed describe local eating and cultivation but do not establish a named dish or a preparation method specific to this species. Cooks who handle it should follow ordinary handling for wood-ear mushrooms from a trusted supplier.

Range and collection records

Voucher records place the species in China, in the provinces of Anhui, Hunan, Inner Mongolia, Jiangxi and Sichuan, and in the Primorye region of Russia's Far East. Thailand has records from Doi Mae Salong in Chiang Rai, and Taiwan has a museum voucher from Miaoli County. The Chinese and Russian collections were made from May through August, and the Thai collections in June and July. Those are dates of specimen collection, not a defined season, and they vary by location.

Confusion with the black wood ear

The species is easily confused with Auricularia heimuer in the field, and it has been sold commercially under that name. Shape, colour and texture overlap, and dried material looks much alike. A label or a photograph does not establish the species, and the sources reviewed treat microscopy and DNA as the only reliable identification.

For that reason this entry gives no advice on foraging or on identifying wild specimens. Use of the ingredient should rest on correctly identified, food-grade cultivated material from a supplier who can say which species it is.

Notes

The Chinese catalogue states that its catalogue source was not independently assessed by the editors of this entry. That annotation is kept as the catalogue's own assessment state. It is not a finding of toxicity, and this entry is not a regulatory or toxicity assessment.

No source reviewed gives a species-specific storage life or a cooking time for Auricularia villosula. None is given here.