Hericium

Hericium ( Hericium erinaceus )

The sting Beards ( Hericium ) are a small fungal genus from the order of Täublingsartigen. Their common characteristic are free hanging spines that are covered by the hymenium. The Latin name Hericium means hedgehog.

Features

The fruiting bodies are branched coral similar or have long droopy spikes. The Trama is fleshy to tough. The Trama is amyloid.

The spores are hyaline and also amyloid. They are globose to ellipsoid shaped and have a smooth surface to feinwarzige. The hyphae are hyaline and have buckles, partly oil drops.

Species

The main European types are:

• Branched spiky beard ( Hericium coralloides )
• Hericium ( Hericium erinaceus )
• Fir spiky beard ( Hericium flagellum )
• Spiky spiky beard ( Hericium cirrhatum )

Ecology and significance

Sting beards are xylobionts, so wood dwellers that grow as a wound parasite on living trees or dead wood as Saprobiont. You fruiting bodies scattered to very rare from early summer to late autumn.

In China, the sting beards are considered good edible mushrooms. There, and increasingly in Europe, the healing effect of these fungi, especially of Hericium Barts is detected. The confusion with poisonous mushrooms is unlikely. Due to their rarity and because they are suitable for breeding, they should be spared in the wild.

Endangering

All kinds of barbed beards scattered to rare. This development was caused to coniferous trees of the same age by the conversion of deciduous and deciduous - coniferous mixed forests with stands of different ages. Was exacerbated the threat from the late 1970s through the reduction of multiple rotations of old forests and individual trees. Members of the genus can be found almost exclusively only in extensively managed landscape regions, nature reserves and forests spell today.