Abstract
The fungus “Fuling” has been used in Chinese traditional medicine for more than 2000 years, and its sclerotia have a wide range of biological activities including antitumour, immunomodulation, anti-inflammation, antioxidation, anti-aging etc. This prized medicinal mushroom also known as “Hoelen” is resurrected from a piece of pre-Linnean scientific literature. Fries treated it as Pachyma hoelen Fr. and mentioned that it was cultivated on pine trees in China. However, this name had been almost forgotten, and Poria cocos (syn. Wolfiporia cocos), originally described from North America, and known as “Tuckahoe” has been applied to “Fuling” in most publications. Although Merrill mentioned a 100 years ago that Asian Pachyma hoelen and North American P. cocos are similar but different, no comprehensive taxonomical studies have been carried out on the East Asian Pachyma hoelen and its related species. Based on phylogenetic analyses and morphological examination on both the sclerotia and the basidiocarps which are very seldomly developed, the East Asian samples of Pachyma hoelen including sclerotia, commercial strains for cultivation and fruiting bodies, nested in a strongly supported, homogeneous lineage which clearly separated from the lineages of North American Wolfiporia cocos and other species. So we confirm that the widely cultivated “Fuling” Pachyma hoelen in East Asia is not conspecific with the North American Wolfiporia cocos. Based on the changes in Art. 59 of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, the generic name Pachyma, which was sanctioned by Fries, has nomenclatural priority (ICN, Art. F.3.1), and this name well represents the economically important stage of the generic type. So we propose to use Pachyma rather than Wolfiporia, and subsequently Pachyma hoelen and Pachyma cocos are the valid names for “Fuling” in East Asia and “Tuckahoe” in North America, respectively. In addition, a new combination, Pachyma pseudococos, is proposed. Furthermore, it seems that Pachyma cocos is a species complex, and that three species exist in North America.
Highlights
In the subkingdom Dikarya, many fungi can produce dense aggregations called sclerotia to survive challenging environmental conditions and to provide reserves for fungi to germinate (Coley-Smith and Cooke, 1971; Willets and Bullock, 1992; Smith et al, 2015)
In the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) phylogenetic tree, the Wolfiporia cocos and Macrohyporia cocos samples from the United States separated into three distinct clades and they are not closely related to Pachyma hoelen in phylogeny
Our phylogenetic reconstruction of the ITS sequences indicates that the North American samples identified as W. cocos and deposited in GenBank cover more than one species
Summary
In the subkingdom Dikarya, many fungi can produce dense aggregations called sclerotia to survive challenging environmental conditions and to provide reserves for fungi to germinate (Coley-Smith and Cooke, 1971; Willets and Bullock, 1992; Smith et al, 2015). The first valid scientific description of this fungal sclerotia was given by Schweinitz (1822), who named it Sclerotium cocos Schwein. This name was accepted by Fries (1822), when he proposed the genus Pachyma Fr. Subsequently, the name Pachyma cocos (Schwein.) Fr. became the most popular binomial of the Tuckahoe mushroom (e.g., Currey and Hanbury, 1860; Gore, 1881; Prilleaux, 1889; Elliott, 1922). Ginns (1984) accepted the generic revision of Ryvarden and Gilbertson (1984) and corrected the name of the species by publishing the binomial, Wolfiporia extensa (Peck) Ginns. The conservation of Poria cocos was recommended by the Nomenclature Committee for Fungi (Norvell, 2008)
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