Growing Procedure

Pleurotus citrinopileatus thrives well at moderate room temperatures and really “shoots” at higher values. Also copes well on over-scalded straw pellets and other simple substrates. Best quality is achieved with sterile substrate on hardwood base and grain, highest yields are achieved on bean straw. Stem crops on hardwoods are also possible. Although obviously heat-loving, stem crops survive even freezing winter periods.

Like all swarm fruiting members of the Pleurotus family, the lime oyster benefits from a few lateral fruiting openings in the substrate container.

From these few spots, cauliflower-like precursors form first, still covered by a delicate skin. Often, remnants of this gossamer coating, which does not otherwise occur in other species of seitlings, are mistaken for mold. In the second picture, magnification reveals what is meant.

Avoid opening the Pleurotus citrinopileatus culture too extensively. The fungus tolerates periods of heat well if it is well ventilated and humidified.

They go about this by excreting digestive enzymes through the tips of root-like extensions called hyphae. The enzymes break down their food leaving a space filled with nutrients that the hyphae can continue growing into, absorbing, and digesting again as it feeds. The hyphae branch and grow into a thicker mass called a mycelium, which maximizes the surface area through which feeding can take place.

Growing

Agar Culture Media: MEA, MYPA, MYA, PDYA
Cropping:
Containers for fruiting: Columns, bags, trays and perforated plastic bottles
Biological efficience: After the second flush, relatively few mushrooms form. Biological Efficiency: 25-75% indoors with wheat straw. Yield efficiencies are higher on cotton seed modified substrates.
Substrates: Rye, wheat, sorghum, milo or millet. Every part of the coffee plant can be recycled by growing oyster mushrooms. Cottonseed hulls, chopped corn cobs, and hardwood sawdust. Alternative substrates that are being commercially developed are sugarcane bagasse, paper by-products, banana leaves, and peanut shells.

Growing Characteristics

Pleurotus citrinopileatus usually grow in large clusters arising from a single attached base. Bunches are often made up of fifty to a hundred or more mushrooms. As strains of this species age, the yellow cap color loses and turns beige, and fewer fungi are produced in each primordial group.

Natural Habitat

As a saprobiont, the Golden Oyster Mushroom attacks dead or injured wood of deciduous trees, where it breaks down the lignin component, causing white rot. Natural substrates are the wood of elms and beeches. It is found in riparian forests and along riverbanks and requires comparatively high temperatures (21-29 °C) to grow, so it does not form fruiting bodies below 16-18 °C, but is very tolerant in the upper temperature range. When fruiting, the relative humidity of the air should be above 80% for the Lemon Toadstool.

Pleurotus citrinopileatus is found in Russia, Africa, as well as in Asia.

A saprophyte of Asian hardwoods, especially oak, elm, beech, and poplar

Gourmet

Pleurotus citrinopileatus remind a little of cashew nuts in taste. They are good to be fried very hot in a pan or wok, you’d better not boil the mushroom. Unfortunately, the color is lost during preparation. With fully ripe specimens they better cut away the stalk, unless they like a little “bite”.

Flesh

white, thin, fibrous, fleshy

Taste

mild, cashew

Smell

grain spawn smells astringent, pungent, nutty or fishy

Nutritional content per 100g

other names

other names

The Golden Oyster Mushroom, Tamogitake (Japanese), Il’Mak (Russian Term For “Elm Mushroom”), Zitronenseitling, Zitronengelber Seitling, Limonen-Seitling, Yellow Oyster Mushroom, Golden Oyster Mushroom, Zitronen-Seitling, Limonen-Seitling, Lemonoyster, Elm Mushroom

Kingdom	Fungi