Phallus echinovolvatus

What the mushroom is

Phallus echinovolvatus is a stinkhorn-family fungus. It was discovered in Hunan Province, China, in 1988 and first described as Dictyophora echinovolvata. In 1996 Kreisel placed Dictyophora in the genus Phallus as a section, and molecular studies since then have supported the change, so the species is now named Phallus echinovolvatus. Some studies still use the name Dictyophora, and the catalogue records the synonyms Dictyophora echinovolvata and Dictyophora indusiata as search aliases.

The common names include bamboo fungus and zhusun, and the English name spiny-cup bamboo fungus is used in some sources. The fungus grows in the decayed litter of bamboo forest, where it is a saprotroph on plant litter and soil. The catalogue lists its cultivation as regional.

Relation to Phallus indusiatus

Phallus echinovolvatus is one of several edible bamboo fungi, alongside P. indusiatus, P. duplicatus and P. rubrovolvatus. The species is separated from P. indusiatus by morphology: the shape of the cap and the echinulate surface of the volva differ. A mitogenome study reports that the mitochondrial genome of P. echinovolvatus is about 50 kb, while that of P. indusiatus is about 89 kb.

The catalogue notes that Chinese products often labelled P. indusiatus belong to several distinct species. A dried product sold under that name therefore does not show which species it came from. The strain and the product should be identified before the product is linked to this species.

Food and trade

The catalogue records P. echinovolvatus as a commercial bamboo-fungus food, identified in market-product research, and as a product of the international dried food trade. The genome paper describes it as widely consumed as a functional food in China, Japan, Germany and North America. The sources give that statement as a general one, so it is not a regional or market record in itself.

No preparation method, storage time or drying procedure is established in the sources used here, and none is stated.

Genome and research

A chromosome-level genome assembly of a dikaryotic strain of the species has been published. It is about 36.54 Mb in size, and it places the species close to Clathrus columnatus within the core Phallales. Few genetic studies of the species had been published before, compared with other edible mushrooms such as Lentinula edodes and Agaricus bisporus.

Identification and safety

The catalogue records the species under food, market and specialist evidence, with its review labels kept as supplied. Those labels do not establish identity, edibility or a safe preparation. Inclusion in the catalogue is not an identification and not an edibility conclusion for wild material.

Because the same common name covers several Phallus species, a dried product cannot be assigned to P. echinovolvatus from its label alone. Identification needs the specimen, the strain and the product origin, checked by a specialist. This page gives no safety verdict for any product.

Open questions

Which products sold as bamboo fungus are this species, and which are P. indusiatus, P. duplicatus or P. rubrovolvatus, is not settled by the sources used here. The catalogue cites a Chinese journal article and a Mycosphere DOI that were not read in this recovery, so no fact is taken from them.