Shiitake specific epithet "" is the Latin word for "edible". It is also commonly called "sawtooth oak mushroom", "black forest mushroom", "black mushroom", "golden oak mushroom", or "oakwood mushroom". Shiitake grow in groups on the decaying wood of deciduous trees, particularly shii, chestnut, oak, maple, beech, sweetgum, poplar, hornbeam, ironwood, mulberry, and chinquapin ("Castanopsis" spp.). Its natural distribution includes warm and moist climates in southeast Asia. The earliest written record of shiitake cultivation is seen in the "Records of Longquan County" () compiled by He Zhan () in 1209 during the Southern Song dynasty. The 185-word description of shiitake cultivation from
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage