Bai Mu Er

Tremella fuciformis, known as snow fungus, white jelly mushroom, or silver ear, is a basidiomycete jelly fungus in the family Tremellaceae, distributed across tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, including East and Southeast Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Americas, where it grows as a parasite on the mycelium of wood-decaying Annulohypoxylon ascomycetes inhabiting fallen broadleaved logs. The fruiting body is gelatinous, translucent, and pure white to pale yellowish when fresh, drying to a brittle ivory-cream mass; it consists of numerous thin, ruffled, leaf-like or seaweed-like lobes radiating from a central base, the entire structure reaching 5-15 cm across. The texture is firm-jellied and rubbery when hydrated. Microscopically the hymenium bears characteristic longitudinally septate basidia that produce ellipsoid basidiospores. The species is widely cultivated commercially in China by inoculation onto sterilized substrate logs alongside its host fungus and is used both as food and as a tonic.