Medium to large agaric, growing on wood, with a white spore print. Pileus brown, not viscid. Lamellae free, adnexed or sinuate or notched. Stipe central or excentric. Partial veil remnants a ring zone or absent. Spores hyaline, non-amyloid, smooth; germ pore absent. Cheilocystidia present, although sometimes scarce. Lamellar trama regular. Context monomitic. Pileipellis a cutis. Clamp connections present.

Lentinula has a rather thin partial veil that can leave a ring zone, or disappear with age, and the stipe is relatively short in relation to the pileus diameter. Among other wood-inhabiting white-spored agarics with a partial veil: Armillaria has a persistent annulus, and the stipe is usually rather long in relation to the pileus diameter; Cyptotrama aspratum is bright orange; Lentinus typically has an infundibuliform pileus, and the pileus trama is dimitic (with skeletal hyphae); Oudemansiella exannulata has a white, viscid pileus; and Pleurotus giganteus has a massive fruit-body with a floccose partial veil and dimitic pileus trama.

Lentinula Earle, Bull. New York. Bot. Gard. 5: 416 (1909).

One species. Wild Australian material is best placed under Lentinula lateritia. The cultivated 'Shiitake' is Lentinula edodes.

Species delimitation within L. edodes sens. lat. is complex. Molecular studies have demonstrated that wild Australian isolates belong solely to one of five independent lineages of L. edodes sens. lat. (Hibbett et al., 1998). These lineages are not reproductively isolated (Petersen 1995), but occupy more or less discrete geographic ranges, with some morphological differentiation (Hibbett et al., 1995; 1998). The type specimen of L. lateritia is from Australia and belongs to the L. edodes group, and so it is appropriate to place Australian material under L. lateritia. Records of L. edodes from Australia apply the name in a broad sense, and there is no evidence that L. edodes sens. strict. is found naturally in Australia, except in cultivation or as an escape from cultivation.

Lentinula edodes (Berk.) Pegler, Kavaka 3: 20 (1975).

Qld, N.S.W and Tas. (and possibly also Vic.).

Cultivated strains of Lentinula edodes are becoming naturalised in the Narrogin district of W.A. (Neale Bougher, pers. comm.).

In native forests (seems to prefer rainforest).

On wood (usually fallen logs).

Saprotrophic.

Hibbett, D.S., Fukumasa-Nakai, Y., Tsuneda, A. & Donoghue, M.J. (1995), Phylogenetic diversity in shiitake inferred from nuclear ribosomal DNA sequences, Mycologia 87: 618–638.

Hibbett, D.S., Hansen, K. & Donoghue, M.J. (1998), Phylogeny and biogeography of Lentinula inferred from an expanded rDNA dataset, Mycol. Res. 102: 1041–1049.

Hood, I.A. (2003), An Introduction to Fungi on Wood in Queensland. University of New England, School of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resources Management, Armidale. [Description, Illustration and B&W Illustration of L. lateritia]

Pegler, D.N. (1983a), The genus Lentinula (Tricholomataceae tribe Collybieae), Sydowia 36: 227–239. [Description, B&W Illustration and Microcharacters of L. lateritia]

Pegler, D.N. (1983b), The genus Lentinus: a world monograph, Kew Bull., Addit. Ser. 10: 1–281. [B&W Illustration and Microcharacters of L. lateritia]

Petersen, R.H. (1995), Contributions of mating studies to mushroom systematics, Canad. J. Bot. 73 (Suppl. 1): S831–S842.