Eremiomyces echinulatus

What it is

Eremiomyces echinulatus is a truffle, a fungus that forms its fruit body underground. It was first described as Choiromyces echinulatus. Molecular work later moved it into the new genus Eremiomyces, where it sits close to the desert truffle genus Terfezia rather than to Choiromyces.

It is one of three truffle species recorded from the Kalahari. The best known of them is Kalaharituber pfeilii, once known as Terfezia pfeilii, which is often called the Kalahari truffle. The two names overlap in everyday use, so a reference to the Kalahari truffle may mean either species. Eremiomyces echinulatus is the only other truffle recorded from the Kalahari.

Where it grows and how it is gathered

The catalogue places the species in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. It forms its fruit bodies underground. The sources describe the Khoisan peoples of the Kalahari as long-standing gatherers of desert truffles, and say that they still value them, but those accounts mainly concern Kalaharituber, not Eremiomyces.

No consulted source describes how this species is harvested, prepared or cooked, and none gives a local name for it.

Food use and the open record

The catalogue records the species as included in regional food ethnomycology for Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. The food-use record was not confirmed in the sources consulted for this page. A review of African truffles notes that Eremiomyces echinulatus and Mattirolomyces austroafricanus have been reported in only a few studies and are therefore not addressed in depth.

A 2008 Economic Botany paper by Trappe, Claridge, Arora and Smit on Kalahari desert truffles is the main primary source for the regional food record. Its full text was not checked for food uses of this species, so the food use recorded here stays provisional until that text is read.

Ecology and what is still open

The species is subterranean. The sources examined for this page describe the host relations of the better-known Kalaharituber, not of Eremiomyces. The open questions are the host plants, the seasons in which the fruit bodies appear, and whether any local name or preparation exists for this species separate from the Kalaharituber record.