While in their usual mushroom state, they are distinctively marked by their honeycomb ridges that run along their caps. When the mushrooms become unrolled for drying, those ridges become much more condensed and linear and it’s less obviously a sponge mushroom and more sneakily appears as type of shelf mushroom.
Sponge mushrooms are carefully sliced and dried to create the shelf-life shape that has become popular in the dried florals industry.
They are typically edible and are used in many recipes, however, the sponge mushrooms found in any of my work are not suitable for eating as they have been dried, treated for preservation, and, occasionally, stained.