Maitake

Grifola frondosa

Meripilaceae

Hen-of-the-woods — a clustered oak fungus eaten for flavor and immune tone.

Culinary-medicinal polypore. Cultivation is legal.

Parts used: Fruiting body
Traditional notes: Recovery foods · Immune support · Blood-sugar folklore
Grow · USDA 6b: Temperate oak-associated saprophyte A fruiting kit or buried oak logs with spawn. In work: Aug · Sep · Oct · Nov
Harvest: When fronds are still tender, before they toughen.

Start with a kit. Buried oak logs are the advanced game.
Harvest fronds while they are still tender.
Cook it like meat. This one is food first.

Safety

Uncertain wild ID Organ transplant without the team

Lore

Hen-of-the-woods, dancing mushroom — maitake — at the base of old oaks. Japanese foragers still treat a find as a small fortune. It is farmable now, which is how a woodland prize became a grocery cluster.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.