Hairy sawgill

Overview

Lentinus crinitus, known as the hairy sawgill, is a bracket fungus that grows on wood in Brazil and Guyana. It is a documented food fungus of Indigenous Amazonian communities, where it is eaten as a staple in several groups' diets. The name is the scientific name; the English common name is the one the catalogue records.

The species is widely distributed in Brazil, occurring in almost all of the country's biomes and in other South American countries.

Ecology

The catalogue describes the species as a wood-inhabiting fungus of Brazilian forests. It grows on dead or living wood and is part of the decay of timber in the forest. Its supply is recorded as unknown, which means the sources do not say whether the mushroom is gathered in the wild or grown.

Food use among Indigenous communities

Several Amazonian communities eat the mushroom, among them the Yanomami and Txicó in Brazil, the Uitoto, Muinane and Andoke in Colombia, the Hotï in Venezuela and rural communities in Loreto, Peru. The cited abstract describes it as a staple food for these groups.

The Uitoto harvest the mushroom young, because older fruiting bodies become tough and leathery. They eat it roasted on yarumo leaves and cooked in broth. A study of Yanomami foods reports that the species is easier to cultivate than many wild fungi and already has a place in Yanomami cooking, which suggests a route to commercial production. No cultivation method is recorded in these sources.

Composition

One analysis of samples from a cultivated site reports about 61 per cent moisture, 14 per cent crude protein, 1.5 per cent ether extract, 26 per cent crude fibre and 3.4 per cent mineral matter. The authors conclude that these values are similar to other commercial fungi. These are figures from one site and one set of samples, and they do not describe the species everywhere.

Edibility and safety

The sources record documented consumption by Indigenous communities, but they do not establish a standardised food-safety assessment. The catalogue states that documented occurrence and consumption do not make such an assessment.

Field guides disagree. One guide quoted in the research is reported to call the species not edible, while noting that Brazilian Indigenous people eat it boiled. This conflict is not resolved by the sources available here, so this page does not give a verdict. Identification of wood-rotting fungi needs local expertise and a reference that covers look-alikes. Appearance, smell and taste do not establish safety.

What is still unknown

The sources do not give a standard preparation, a measured toxicity profile for the wild fruiting bodies, or the season and harvest pattern. A next research question is which field guide is correct about the edibility conflict, and how the boiled and roasted preparations compare in the communities that use them.