Studies of morphological and genetic variability of hericium erinaceus from the northwest area of the sierra madre occidental, durango, mexico

Hericium erinaceus, known as lion's mane, is one of the most important cultivated mushrooms worldwide. It grows wild through European and North American countries; meanwhile, in Asia it is mostly artificially cultivated. Several studies revealed the difficulty of its taxonomic identification and the influence of environmental conditions over its morphological characters. The present study aimed to evaluate the morphological and genetic variability of wild specimens of H. erinaceus collected from seven different sites in the temperate forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Durango, Mexico. The H. erinaceus isolates showed important morphological differences between the different specimens, mainly in the length of the basidioma, in some cases presenting as twice the size (55 cm) as that previously reported for the species. Unlike the morphological results, the genetic analysis showed homogeneity among the samples. Despite the obvious differences in morphological studies, the genetic study did not indicate a significant difference between the analyzed individuals. However, current results provide new information for the morphological characterization of specimens for northern Mexico, and the first record of seven new internal transcribed spacer sequences and geographic distribution data for this species in northern Mexico.