Lion’s mane grows as a single shaggy clump of soft white spines, up to 40 cm across, with no cap or stem. Both halves of its Latin name mean “hedgehog”. It lives on beech, maple and oak across North America, Europe and Asia, usually on dead or wounded wood, and copes well with frost. Cooks prize young specimens for their meaty texture.

Cordyceps militaris forms small, club-shaped stalks, 1 to 8 cm tall, in bright orange to red. In the wild it rises from insect pupae buried in the soil across much of the Northern Hemisphere, and Carl Linnaeus first described it in 1753. Today it is grown on rice and other substrates, mainly in China and Vietnam, and goes into soups and hot pots across Asia.

Known in China as lingzhi, reishi is a fan-shaped mushroom with a reddish-brown cap that looks almost varnished, fine pores instead of gills and firm, cork-like flesh. It grows on the stumps of hardwoods such as maple in East Asia, and most of it has been cultivated since the 1970s. Bitter and woody, it is traditionally sliced and simmered into a dark tea, and in Chinese art it stands for good fortune.

Its name joins shii, a tree native to Japan, with take, the Japanese word for mushroom; its Latin name, edodes, simply means “edible”. Native to East and Southeast Asia, shiitake grows in clusters on fallen hardwoods such as oak, chestnut and beech. Records of its cultivation in China date back to 1209, and today it makes up about a quarter of the world’s mushroom harvest.

Maitake means “dancing mushroom” in Japanese. In English it is hen-of-the-woods, for its ruffled clusters of grey-brown, spoon-shaped caps that can reach 50 cm across. It grows at the base of old oaks and maples in China, Europe and eastern North America, appearing from late summer into autumn. It is considered a choice edible, with young caps prized slow-cooked.