Tremella mesenterica
jelly fungus
Tremella mesenterica (common names include yellow brain, golden jelly fungus, yellow trembler, and witches' butter) is a common jelly fungus in the family Tremellaceae of the Agaricomycotina. The gelatinous, orange-yellow fruit body of the fungus, which can grow up to 7.5 cm (3 in) diameter, has a convoluted or lobed surface that is greasy or slimy when damp.
It is most frequently found on both dead but attached and recently fallen branches, especially of angiosperms, as a parasite of wood-decay fungi in the genus Peniophora. It also grows in crevices in bark, appearing during rainy weather. Within a few days after rain it dries into a thin film or shriveled mass capable of reviving after subsequent rain. This fungus occurs widely in deciduous and mixed forests and is widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions, including those of Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. The fungus is potentially edible and produces carbohydrates that have attracted research interest because of their various biological activity.
Taxonomy
The species was originally described in 1769 from Sweden by Anders Jahan Retzius. It was later (1822) sanctioned by Elias Magnus Fries in the second volume of his Systema Mycologicum. It is the type species of the genus Tremella.
“Tremella mesenterica” enters the record as jelly fungus. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tremella, mesenterica and jelly can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Tremella mesenterica” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tremella, mesenterica and jelly provides the most credible route into that argument.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19733. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1769 and 1822.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tremella mesenterica” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.