Wood Ear
Auricularia auricula-judae
Alternative names: Jelly Ear, Jew's Ear
Wood Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae) is one of the best beginner mushrooms for foragers in the UK due to it’s unique appearance, specific habitat requirements and the relative safety of consumption. This unassuming and common brown mushroom is also easy to work with in the kitchen and adds something different to a dish with a distinctive umami flavour.
Where Does Wood Ear Grow?
We find Wood ear growing reliably on dead Elder (Sambucus nigra) trees or dead branches of Elder, it is mostly a saprotrophic fungi feeding on this dead wood although occasionally it acts as a weak parasite on living wood. Although it favours Elder as a habitat, wood ear is sometimes found on other deciduous species – specifically Sycamore, Beech, Ash and Spindle. Infected trees don’t need to be in a woodland, they may be in hedgerows, gardens or parks or areas of scrubby growth.
Wood ear are unlike many other edible mushrooms in that they will appear almost year round, although the peak time of year to go looking for them is still Autumn and Winter after a recent heavy rainfall. Once you have identified a branch or tree which is playing host to wood ear, visit it a few days after a sustained period of rain and you are likely to find it covered in wood ear of various shapes and sizes.
Is Wood Ear Edible?
Yes. In fact the common name of Wood ear is applied to several related species worldwide and it is used regularly for cooking in China, where a cultivated version Auricularia heimuer is grown commercially – you can also buy this species as a dried ingredient in the UK.
Wood ear can be collected and used fresh in it’s jelly-like state, there are a myriad of recipes online which use these mushrooms and their relatives in stir fries, soups and casseroles. They can also be dried (or collected once dry) and then stored for later use. Dried Wood ear can be ground up and used as a flavouring in stocks, or added to soups etc during cooking to absorb the flavours. Our favourite recipe for dried jelly ear is to rehydrate in a fruit juice or alcohol and then coat them in chocolate and eat as sweets or give away as gifts.
How to Identify Wood Ear
Wood / Jelly ear with it’s distinctive shape and texture is difficult to mistake for anything else. This mushroom is a pinkish hued brown colour and varies in size from being smaller than a jelly bean when very young up to a large ear shape with ‘veins’ which may cover the palm of your hand and can be folded and bent in half. Jelly ear is a jelly-like bracket fungus which grows out from the dead wood of Elder with no stem. Despite it’s jelly-like nature, Wood ear is not slimy or sticky when in it’s prime and rather than disintegrating into a sludge, wood ear tends to simply dry out on the tree as it ages and then stays there. We have come across old and dried up wood ear coated in a film of algae, which isn’t uncommon for bracket fungi in general.
There are essentially two forms which you will find Wood ear occupying, the first is a recent flush of fruiting bodies which are flexible, soft and have a matte finish and pink tinged brown colouration. Once dried out, wood ear become a very dark brown colour and can be snapped like the overcooked edge of a pasta bake.
Potential dangers and misidentification
There are some other Jelly type fungi which grow wild in the UK, but once you are familiar with wood ear, these other species are easy to distinguish.
***A NOTE OF CAUTION***
Foraging and hunting for wild food is a potentially hazardous activity.
Whilst we do our best to make sure these species and wild food guides are as accurate as possible there is ALWAYS the possibility of the user (or the author…) misidentifying a plant or other item, and the descriptions given might also apply to similar toxic plants.
Common names cannot be relied upon as they change from region to region, and there are some similar names for very different plants. When researching species on the internet you can sometimes find a common name referring to a completely different species to the one you are trying to learn about.
You should always be confident of the identification of a plant, fungus or lichen BEFORE you touch it and especially before you put it anywhere near your mouth.
The best way to do that is by checking with a good wild flower key or identification book, and ideally cross-referencing between more than one book.
Or – as all of the cool people say: Never Munch on a Hunch.
Amy is a UK wild food instructor and naturalist with over a decade of experience working and volunteering with ecological consultants, local wildlife charities and nationwide surveys. She is constantly developing her knowledge about wild edibles and studying how we can contribute to the natural environments which mean so much to us.
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