Black termite mushroom

Names and taxonomy

Hymenopellis raphanipes was formerly placed in Oudemansiella and in Xerula; its earlier names include Oudemansiella raphanipes and Xerula raphanipes. Petersen placed the species in Hymenopellis in 2010. A 2023 PeerJ paper treats the Chinese name heipijizong as H. raphanipes.

The market name "black termite mushroom" is a trade name. The fungus is not a Termitomyces and is not a termite symbiont. The catalogue records that old cultivation records include misidentifications.

Ecology and growth

The species is a saprotrophic rooting mushroom: it decomposes organic matter rather than living with termites. The catalogue records it as a regional cultivation.

A 2016 study describes it as a radicate Oudemansiella species that was widely cultivated in China, confirmed by morphology and molecular data.

Cultivation and scale

A 2022 Frontiers paper reports that annual yield in China has exceeded 20,000 tons. Growers face disease: a 2022 study found that cobweb disease caused by Cladobotryum species is a major problem, and it reported a new green mould pathogen, Trichoderma hymenopellicola. The sources do not give detailed cultivation protocols, so none are set out here.

Food use and safety

The descriptions give the species as edible and as a commercially cultivated food mushroom in China. No preservation method is validated in the sources reviewed.

Identification and safety: a name, a photograph or one regional guide does not confirm that a wild specimen is this species. This page is not a collection key. Edibility statements refer to the named species as understood by each source, not any particular specimen. Because the common name refers to termites, a market label is not an identification. Cultivated product is not a wild specimen, and the cultivation records include misidentifications.