Matsutake, American

Also white matsutake or pine mushroom

“Matsutake (matsu = pine; take = mushroom) is the collective Japanese common name for a group of similar mushrooms formed by closely related Tricholoma” species, write Yun, Hall, and Evans in Economic Botany. American matsutake, which they classify as T. magnivelare, and which grows primarily in the Pacific Northwest, is a relative of Japanese matsutake, a seasonal prize second only to Alba and Perigord truffles in the category of luxury fungi.

The Japanese passion for matsutake was the impetus for the American “discovery” of this species—for reasons that have as much to do with economics as with cuisine. “Large-scale commercial mushroom harvesting in the United States is concentrated on matsutake, morels, chanterelles, boletes, black Oregon truffles, and hedgehogs—to list them in order of their greatest to least cash value per harvest,” says David Pilz, a botanist at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture in Corvallis, Oregon. “Japan is the main market for American matsutake, followed by Asian communities in the U.S. and Canada.”