The velvet shank, or winter mushroom (Flammulina velutipes), is a small, tufted wood-rotting fungus that fruits in the coldest months, forming vivid orange-tan clusters on dead and dying broadleaf trees across the temperate Northern Hemisphere. It is the wild ancestor of the pale, spindly cultivated enoki, but in nature looks and tastes nothing like it: the cap is glossy orange to tawny-brown, the stem is clad in a dark, velvety-brown down (the source of both its English and Latin names), and the flavour is a mild, sweet, savoury mushroom note with a slippery, resilient bite once cooked.