Raises the activity of natural killer cells, the immune system's first line against infected cells
Human trialGrifola frondosa
Maitake
Japan's “dancing mushroom”: a prized food, and a fixture of immune research since the 1980s.
Overview
Find one maitake and you know where the next one will be.
Maitake grows in great ruffled rosettes at the foot of old oaks: dozens of overlapping grey-brown fronds rising from one branched base, sometimes half a metre wide. English speakers call it hen of the woods, for its likeness to a hen with her feathers fluffed out on the nest. It grows wild in Britain too, though finding one is a rare piece of luck.
The fungus lives in the tree's roots and lower trunk, slowly breaking down the heartwood, and fruits from the same spot year after year. In the kitchen it is rich, savoury and faintly sweet, with a firm, almost meaty bite. In the laboratory it has been a fixture of immune research since Japanese chemists isolated its signature beta-glucans in the 1980s.
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20kg+
for the biggest wild rosettes, heavy enough to need two hands and a strong back.
-
2weeks
the window in which maitake often reappears on the same tree, autumn after autumn. Foragers guard those trees closely.
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56,000tonnes
grown in Japan every year. By value, only shiitake and buna-shimeji outsell it among the country's cultivated mushrooms.
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40years
of laboratory and clinical research since Japanese chemists first isolated its signature beta-glucan.
Its other names
Maitake is Japanese for “dancing mushroom”, said to capture a forager's joy at the find. Its Latin name, Grifola, comes from an old Italian name for it meaning “griffin”.
Kumotake
“Cloud mushroom”
Japan
Huī shù huā
“Grey tree flower”
China
Pied de griffon
“Griffin's foot”
France
Benefits
What it's studied for
- Human trial 4
- Animal 2
Restored ovulation in women with polycystic ovary syndrome
Human trialImproved cognitive test scores in healthy older adults
Human trialCut the number of days with fever and a runny nose
Human trialImproves insulin sensitivity and lowers blood sugar
AnimalLowers cholesterol and blood pressure
AnimalTradition
History of use
For most of its history, maitake was a forager's prize, found only in the wild and sold at a high price.
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Kyotoaround 1100
A collection of tales from the late Heian period tells of woodcutters, lost in the hills, who meet Buddhist nuns singing and dancing after a meal of wild mushrooms. The story gave Japan its “dancing mushrooms”. Scholars think the nuns had eaten a hallucinogenic species, and the name has since settled on Grifola frondosa.
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Feudal Japan
Every maitake was a wild find. Folklore has it that a good specimen was worth its weight in silver, and families kept the locations of their maitake trees to themselves.
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Scotland1785
The Scottish botanist James Dickson gave it its first scientific description. In 1821 Samuel Frederick Gray moved it into a new genus, Grifola, where it remains.
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Japan1981
After a long resistance to cultivation, maitake reached commercial farms in 1981, with 325 tonnes in the first year.
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Kobe1987
Hiroaki Nanba and colleagues at Kobe Pharmaceutical University published the structure of a large, branched beta-glucan from maitake, the basis of the D-fraction that most clinical work has since used.
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New York2009
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center published a clinical trial of a maitake extract, measuring its effects on the immune system in people.
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Japan2026
Two double-blind trials had volunteers eat 50 g of maitake a day, baked into bread, for up to 18 weeks, and tracked their immunity, cold symptoms and memory.
Key active compounds
What's inside the mushroom
Polysaccharides
D-fraction and its relatives
Maitake's best-known compounds are its beta-glucans, long chains of sugar that immune cells recognise. Its signature is the D-fraction: a protein-bound beta-glucan with an unusually elaborate structure, its sugar chains linked in two different ways at once, and a molecular weight of around a million daltons.
Size matters here. When researchers heated a maitake beta-glucan until its molecules broke apart, its immune activity faded with them. In mice, the purified MD-fraction taken by mouth is picked up by immune tissue in the wall of the small intestine, which then signals to the rest of the immune system.
Glycoproteins and alpha-glucans
SX-fraction and MT-α-glucan
A beta-glucan count misses some of maitake's most active compounds. The SX-fraction, a glycoprotein, switched insulin signalling back on in muscle cells exposed to high glucose, and it is the extract behind the polycystic ovary syndrome trial. MT-α-glucan, an alpha-glucan from the fruiting body, lowered blood sugar and insulin in diabetic mice.
Antioxidants
Glutathione and ergothioneine
In a Penn State analysis of 13 kinds of mushroom, maitake carried the most glutathione, the body's main antioxidant inside cells, at nearly four times the level in white button mushrooms. It also carries ergothioneine, an antioxidant amino acid that only fungi and some bacteria can make.
Sterols
Ergosterol and vitamin D
Maitake is one of the richest mushroom sources of ergosterol, the fungal sterol that sunlight turns into vitamin D2. Fresh maitake can carry up to 28 µg of vitamin D per 100 g, nearly three times the UK's daily recommendation, and drying it in the sun raises the level further.
- Maitake 3.8×
- White button mushroom 1×
Kalaras et al., Food Chemistry, 2017.
Selected research
The research
Maitake has one of the deepest research records of any culinary mushroom: Japanese clinical reports from the 1990s, trials at Memorial Sloan Kettering from 2009, and in 2026 two double-blind trials of whole maitake eaten every day.
2002
Effects of a water-soluble extract of maitake mushroom on circulating glucose/insulin concentrations in KK mice
Gave diabetic mice a single dose of a water-soluble maitake fraction.
Blood glucose fell by about a quarter.
2009
A phase I/II trial of a polysaccharide extract from Grifola frondosa (maitake mushroom) in breast cancer patients: immunological effects
34 women who had completed breast cancer treatment took a maitake polysaccharide extract for three weeks.
Clear changes in immune function, raising some measures and lowering others depending on dose; no serious side effects.
2010
Maitake mushroom (Grifola frondosa) extract induces ovulation in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome
80 women with polycystic ovary syndrome took a maitake extract, the fertility drug clomiphene, or both.
20 of 26 ovulated on maitake alone, against 29 of 31 on clomiphene, a difference that was not statistically significant. 13 of 15 women who had not responded to one treatment ovulated on the two together.
2013
Oral administration of soluble β-glucans extracted from Grifola frondosa induces systemic antitumor immune response and decreases immunosuppression in tumor-bearing mice
Gave mice the purified MD-fraction by mouth.
Immune tissue in the gut took it up and set off a body-wide immune response.
2026
Maitake mushroom (Grifola frondosa) enhances cognitive function in healthy older Japanese: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial
47 healthy adults over 60 ate bread containing 50 g of maitake a day for 18 weeks.
Better scores on a widely used cognitive test, and higher natural killer cell activity, with one of the two maitake strains tested.
2026
Maitake mushroom supplementation modulates upper respiratory symptoms and immune responses in healthy adults: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial
Younger and older adults ate maitake bread for 11 to 18 weeks.
Fewer days of fever and runny nose with one strain; no difference in how often people caught a respiratory infection.
The polycystic ovary syndrome trial was open-label and used one specific maitake fraction, and the 2026 bread trials found their effects with one of the two strains tested.
Good to know
Maitake is a common food, and in clinical trials side effects were mild and uncommon. Because it can lower blood sugar, check with your doctor first if you take diabetes medication, and do the same if you take warfarin or another blood thinner. Avoid it if you are pregnant or breastfeeding or have a mushroom allergy, and if you are having cancer treatment, talk to your medical team before taking it.
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References
- [1]Millman L. Fungipedia: A Brief Compendium of Mushroom Lore. Princeton University Press, 2019.
- [2]First Nature. Grifola frondosa (Dicks.) Gray, Hen of the Woods. first-nature.com.
- [3]Kuo M. Grifola frondosa. MushroomExpert.com, 2017.
- [4]Japan Forestry Agency. Mushroom production briefing: maitake 56,763 t (2022); 56,609 t (2024).
- [5]Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Forestry White Paper FY2023, chapter 2-2-1 (2022 production values).
- [6]Penn State Extension. Specialty mushrooms: production technology (citing Takama et al. 1981).
- [7]Sanford JH. Japan’s “laughing mushrooms”. Economic Botany 1972;26(2):174–181. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [8]Lawrence S. The Magic of Mushrooms: Fungi in folklore, superstition and traditional medicine. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
- [9]Mayell M. Maitake extracts and their therapeutic potential. Altern Med Rev 2001;6(1):48–60. PubMed (Opens in a new window)
- [10]Wu JY, Siu KC, Geng P. Bioactive ingredients and medicinal values of Grifola frondosa (maitake). Foods 2021;10(1):95. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [11]Nanba H, Hamaguchi A, Kuroda H. The chemical structure of an antitumor polysaccharide in fruit bodies of Grifola frondosa (maitake). Chem Pharm Bull 1987;35(3):1162–8. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [12]Adachi Y, Ohno N, Ohsawa M, Oikawa S, Yadomae T. Change of biological activities of (1→3)-beta-D-glucan from Grifola frondosa upon molecular weight reduction by heat treatment. Chem Pharm Bull 1990;38(2):477–81. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [13]Masuda Y, Inoue H, Ohta H, Miyake A, Konishi M, Nanba H. Oral administration of soluble β-glucans extracted from Grifola frondosa induces systemic antitumor immune response and decreases immunosuppression in tumor-bearing mice. Int J Cancer 2013;133(1):108–19. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [14]Konno S, Alexander B, Zade J, Choudhury M. Possible hypoglycemic action of SX-fraction targeting insulin signal transduction pathway. Int J Gen Med 2013;6:181–187. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [15]Hong L, Xun M, Wutong W. Anti-diabetic effect of an alpha-glucan from fruit body of maitake (Grifola frondosa) on KK-Ay mice. J Pharm Pharmacol 2007;59(4):575–82. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [16]Manohar V, Talpur NA, Echard BW, Lieberman S, Preuss HG. Effects of a water-soluble extract of maitake mushroom on circulating glucose/insulin concentrations in KK mice. Diabetes Obes Metab 2002;4(1):43–8. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [17]Kubo K, Nanba H. Anti-hyperliposis effect of maitake fruit body (Grifola frondosa). I. Biol Pharm Bull 1997;20(7):781–5. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [18]Talpur NA, Echard BW, Fan AY, Jaffari O, Bagchi D, Preuss HG. Antihypertensive and metabolic effects of whole maitake mushroom powder and its fractions in two rat strains. Mol Cell Biochem 2002;237(1–2):129–36. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [19]Kalaras MD, Richie JP, Calcagnotto A, Beelman RB. Mushrooms: a rich source of the antioxidants ergothioneine and glutathione. Food Chem 2017;233:429–433. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [20]Phillips KM, Ruggio DM, Horst RL et al. Vitamin D and sterol composition of 10 types of mushrooms from retail suppliers in the United States. J Agric Food Chem 2011;59(14):7841–53. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [21]USDA FoodData Central. Mushrooms, maitake, raw (FDC ID 169403).
- [22]NHS. Vitamin D: how much you need (10 micrograms a day for adults).
- [23]Deng G, Lin H, Seidman A et al. A phase I/II trial of a polysaccharide extract from Grifola frondosa (maitake mushroom) in breast cancer patients: immunological effects. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 2009;135(9):1215–21. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [24]Chen JT, Tominaga K, Sato Y, Anzai H, Matsuoka R. Maitake mushroom (Grifola frondosa) extract induces ovulation in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome. J Altern Complement Med 2010;16(12):1295–9. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [25]Jogi EM, Kato MC, Masuda Y et al. Maitake mushroom (Grifola frondosa) enhances cognitive function in healthy older Japanese: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. J Nutr Sci Vitaminol 2026;72(2):163–175. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [26]Masuda Y, Nakayama Y, Shimizu R et al. Maitake mushroom supplementation modulates upper respiratory symptoms and immune responses in healthy adults: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Food Funct 2026;17(18):8114–8126. DOI (Opens in a new window)
- [27]Hanselin MR, Vande Griend JP, Linnebur SA. INR elevation with maitake extract in combination with warfarin. Ann Pharmacother 2010;44(1):223–4. DOI (Opens in a new window)
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