Hed yuea phai | เห็ดเยื่อไผ่ | Phallus indusiatus
Family: Phallaceae - Genus: Phallus
This mushroom will start showing up in the area (usually in the forest area) during the rainy season in Paksong area and on the premises of TCDF and Eco-Logic.
Phallus indusiatus, commonly called the veiled lady mushroom, bamboo mushrooms, bamboo pith, long net stinkhorn or crinoline stinkhorn, is a fungus in the family Phallaceae, or stinkhorns. The fruit body of the fungus is characterized by a conical to bell-shaped cap on a stalk and a delicate lacy "skirt", or indusium, that hangs from beneath the cap and reaches nearly to the ground.
Mature fruit bodies are up to 25 centimeter tall with a conical to bell-shaped cap that is 1.5–4 centimeter wide. The cap is covered with a greenish-brown spore-containing slime, which attracts flies and other insects that eat the spores and disperse them.
It is an edible mushroom featured as an ingredient in Chinese haute cuisine, it is used in stir-fries and chicken soups. The mushroom is rich in protein, carbohydrates, and dietary fiber. The mushroom also contains various bioactive compounds, and has antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. Phallus indusiatus has a recorded history of use in Chinese medicine extending back to the 7th century AD, and features in Nigerian folklore.
The mushroom can be harvested before the veil changes color.
THE MUSHROOM
Immature fruit bodies of the Veiled Lady mushroom are initially enclosed in an egg-shaped to roughly spherical subterranean structure encased in a peridium. The "egg" ranges in color from whitish to buff to reddish-brown, measures up to 6 centimeter in diameter, and usually has a thick mycelial cord attached at the bottom. As the mushroom matures, the pressure caused by the enlargement of the internal structures cause the peridium to tear and the fruit body rapidly emerges from the "egg". The mature mushroom is up to 25 centimeter tall and girded with a net-like structure called the indusium (or less technically a "skirt") that hangs down from the conical to bell-shaped cap. The netlike openings of the indusium may be polygonal or round in shape. Well-developed specimens have an indusium that reaches to the volva and flares out somewhat before collapsing on the stalk. The cap is 1.5–4 centimeter wide and its reticulated (pitted and ridged) surface is covered with a layer of greenish-brown and foul-smelling slime, the gleba, which initially partially obscures the reticulations. The top of the cap has a small hole. The stalk is 7–25 centimeter long, and 1.5–3 centimeter thick. The hollow stalk is white, roughly equal in width throughout its length, sometimes curved, and spongy. The ruptured peridium remains as a loose volva at the base of the stalk. Fruit bodies develop during the night, and require 10–15 hours to fully develop after emerging from the peridium. They are short-lived, typically lasting no more than a few days. At that point the slime has usually been removed by insects, leaving the pale off-white, bare cap surface exposed. Spores of the mushroom are thin-walled, smooth, elliptical or slightly curved, hyaline (translucent), and measure 2–3 by 1–1.5 μm.
CULINARY USES
The fungus is sold dried and is usually rehydrated before cooking
Tom yuea phai is a Thai soup made with this fungus.
In eastern Asia, P. indusiatus is considered a delicacy and an aphrodisiac.
The dried fungus, commonly sold in Asian markets, is prepared by rehydrating and soaking or simmering in water until tender. Sometimes used in stir-fries, it is traditionally used as a component of rich chicken soups. The rehydrated mushroom can also be stuffed and cooked.
Nutritional analyses of P. indusiatus show that the fruit bodies are over 90% water, about 6% fiber, 4.8% protein, 4.7% fat, and several mineral elements, including calcium, although the mineral composition in the fungus may depend on corresponding concentrations in the growth substrate.
TRADITIONAL MEDICINAL USE
NOTE: please take advice from a doctor if you are planning to use herbal medicine.
Medicinal properties have been ascribed to Phallus indusiatus from the time of the Chinese Tang Dynasty when it was described in pharmacopoeia. The fungus was used to treat many inflammatory, stomach, and neural diseases. Southern China's Miao people continue to use it traditionally for a number of afflictions, including injuries and pains, cough, dysentery, enteritis, leukemia, and feebleness, and it has been prescribed clinically as a treatment for laryngitis, leucorrhea, fever, and oliguria (low urine output), diarrhea, hypertension, cough, hyperlipidemia, and in anticancer therapy.
INTO THE WILD: a down to earth experience
For guests and visitors to Paksong we organize weekly tours "The Edible Forest" and Foraging weekends: Into the Wild. We work with local guides to take you in the jungle of Paksong. After foraging, we will cook a meal with the ingredients, using bamboo together with you!
Come and join and learn about the abundance of food that nature gives us!
INTO THE WILD!
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