History

• Natural origin: Shimeji is a strictly lignicolous saprophytic mushroom. It grows naturally in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere (East Asia, Northern Europe, and North America). It develops on dead or decaying wood of broadleaf trees, with a particular affinity for trees of the beech family (Fagus), from which it gets its vernacular name.

• Earliest traces: Wild foraging of Shimeji is a millennia-old tradition in Japan, where it was harvested in the autumn in broadleaf forests. Its gastronomic reputation there has been immense for centuries, although its cultivation long remained impossible due to the complexity of replicating the conditions for cluster fruiting.

• Present day: The modern history of Shimeji is inseparable from Japan. Its cultivation exploded in the 1970s thanks to the adaptation of the famous controlled-environment bottle cultivation technique. The great revolution occurred in the early 2000s: Japanese researchers selected and patented the Bunapi-shimeji (the white version), a mutation obtained to eliminate the natural bitterness of the raw mushroom and appeal to a wider audience, especially children. Today, both brown and white varieties are cultivated industrially worldwide on enriched sawdust substrates.