Tremella (Snow Mushroom)
Also known as: tremella-fuciformis, snow-mushroom, silver-ear-fungus
Hyaluronic acid's softer, smaller-molecule sister. A white jelly fungus that's been in Chinese herbal skin rituals for 1,000 years and now every K-beauty lab in Seongsu.
What It Does
Deep Dive
Tremella fuciformis is an edible jelly fungus used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries, promoted as the "food of beauty." Its polysaccharide has a smaller molecular weight than hyaluronic acid, which lets it slip deeper into the stratum corneum while still binding serious amounts of water — lab studies put its water-holding capacity at around 5x HA. On skin it reads as a softer, plumper hydration — less sticky than HA, less jelly than beta-glucan. K-beauty brands like SKIN1004, Purito, and Aestura layer it into essences and creams; increasingly it's showing up in Western formulations too. Good candidate for sensitive or compromised barriers that find HA too tacky.
Sources
- [1]Tremella polysaccharide in topical formulations — View source