Lion's mane
Hericium erinaceus · Tooth fungi (Hericium)
Special mushroom – look, don’t pick Red List: Endangered (2)Also: Bearded tooth
Season, habitat and weather analysis for your place →
Edible and known as a cultivated mushroom (“lion’s mane”) – but the wild form is endangered in Germany (Red List category 2). Please leave it standing and take photos. If you want to eat it, buy cultivated ones.
Recognise it safely – what matters
- White “shaggy ball” without cap or stem
- Long, unbranched, hanging spines
- On old broadleaf trees, often high on the trunk
Features
- Cap
- No cap: a white cushion- to ball-shaped fruit body, 5–25 cm, later cream-yellow to brownish.
- Underside
- Long, crowded, hanging spines (1–5 cm), unbranched – like a mane or a beard.
- Stem
- No stem, attached directly to the wood.
- Flesh
- White, tough-elastic and fibrous, yellowish with age.
- Smell
- Mild, pleasant.
- Spore print
- White.
Season
JFMAMJJASOND
Habitat
On wounds and branch holes of old living broadleaf trees, mainly beech and oak, often several metres up the trunk; less often on stumps and thick dead wood. Needs old forests with habitat trees and is correspondingly rare.
Pyökki, Tammi
Risk of confusion
Coral tooth fungus Branched like coral, with shorter spines along the branches; usually on fallen beech wood.
Hericium flagellum Also branched and grows on silver fir in mountain forests.
Never identify mushrooms by pictures or an app alone. When in doubt, ask a mushroom expert – and only pick what you know for sure.