Velvet shank: the mushroom you harvest when it freezes

In December you expect nothing from a mushroom log. The mycelium sleeps, the garden is bare and the harvest baskets sit in the shed. Except for one species. Velvet shank, Flammulina velutipes to science, does the exact opposite of every other edible wood mushroom: it waits for the cold. The first clusters often appear after the first night frost and keep coming until March.

How do you recognise velvet shank?

Small to medium caps of two to six centimetres, glossy orange-brown to honey yellow, often sticky after rain. They grow in dense clusters on dead broadleaf wood. The name is in the stem: tough, dark brown to nearly black at the base and covered in a fine velvet you can feel under your fingers. Anyone who has seen a cluster in hard frost, caps rimed with ice and still very much alive, does not forget it.

Is it the same as enoki?

Yes and no. Supermarket enoki, those long snow-white strands with tiny caps, is the same species, but grown in the dark in tall bottles with lots of CO2. Without light the fungus turns pale and stretches. Outdoors, in daylight and cold, exactly the same fungus grows into the sturdy orange-brown mushroom described above. Same species, different upbringing. The outdoor version has more flavour, the indoor one is crunchier. We sell plug spawn of a yellow and a white strain, so you can choose which way to go.

Why does it grow in winter of all times?

Velvet shank has a trick few mushrooms possess: it makes its own antifreeze. Its cells keep working at temperatures where other species shut down, and a cluster that freezes, thaws and simply carries on growing is no exception. For the fungus it is a smart strategy. In winter there is no competition from other mushrooms and no slug or insect eating the harvest. It has the dead wood to itself from November to March.

Which wood do you grow velvet shank on?

Soft broadleaf wood. Alder, willow, poplar and fruit trees are favourites, ash and beech work too. Unlike shiitake, the log need not be pretty or thick: velvet shank does brilliantly on thinner logs and even on stumps and wood piles. That makes it a rewarding species for a dead hedge. Inoculation is the same as for all plug spawn: drill holes, tap in the plugs, seal with wax, then wait. Expect your first clusters in the second winter after inoculating.

What should you watch out for when harvesting?

A serious warning belongs here. In the wild, velvet shank has a deadly lookalike: the funeral bell, Galerina marginata, also grows in clusters on dead wood in winter and resembles velvet shank from a distance. The difference is clear to anyone who knows what to look for: the funeral bell has a ring on the stem and rusty brown spores, velvet shank has no ring, a velvety dark stem and white spores. On a log you inoculated yourself the risk of confusion is small, because you know what is in it. But anyone foraging in the woods must know this difference, and when in doubt, not eat.

How do you eat it?

Remove the tough stem base and fry the caps with the upper part of the stem briefly in hot oil, as we described for oyster mushrooms. The flavour comes into its own in soups and broths: slightly sweet, a little nutty, with a bite that holds up. Ramen with a handful of fresh velvet shank from your own garden, on an evening when it is freezing outside, is about the best reason to have this species.