What If Gone

Species → Matsutake

Matsutake

Tricholoma matsutake

No population figure — the species can only be surveyed through its…
Extinction risk Vulnerable
Obligate mutualismTemperate forestAgricultural
Matsutake (Tricholoma matsutake)
Photo: Japonica, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What if it disappeared?

Impact Moderate
Over 41 years, Nagano

On a pine plot managed through thinning and litter removal over 41 years, matsutake produced 2.4 times more mushrooms than an unmanaged control plot — the longest-running evidence ever gathered that abandoning traditional forest practices drives the species' decline.

Documented
Detail

Furukawa, H., Tokuoka, K., Mizuno, A., Katagiri, K., Masuno, K., Tanaka, Y., Oya, S. et Yamada, A. (2024). Long-term effects of forest management on the dynamics of Tricholoma matsutake harvest over 41 years in a Pinus densiflora forest in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Mycoscience, 65(6), 298–306.

Over the full period, the managed plot produced 37,192 fruiting bodies per hectare (1,561 kg fresh weight) versus just 15,568 on the control plot (607 kg) — and the latter showed a significant, continuous decline throughout the monitoring period. Humus buildup and root competition from hardwood species, left unchecked without management, smother matsutake's mycelium, which needs poor, mineral soil to fruit.

Over fifty years, worldwide

The global decline of matsutake is estimated at more than 30% over fifty years, driven by an equivalent decline in the quality and area of the pine forests it depends on — hit by pine diseases in East Asia, deforestation in southwestern China, and excess atmospheric nitrogen in Europe.

Documented
Detail

Brandrud, T.E. (2020). Tricholoma matsutake. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020.

Matsutake is an obligate mycorrhizal fungus: it can only live in symbiosis with the roots of a living pine tree, and its fruiting depends directly on that host's health — making the species vulnerable to any threat facing the pine forest itself, rather than the fungus alone.

Not measured to date

As an obligate mycorrhizal fungus, matsutake exchanges nutrients with the pine roots it colonizes — but no study measures what its disappearance would change for the health of the host tree or for the rest of the soil's fungal and microbial community; available research covers the causes of its decline, not its functional role.

Insufficient

Documentation

Last verified: August 14, 2026