Abstract: The discarded tea twigs were used as main cultural materials to investigate the effects of different tea twigs addition on Hericium erinaceus mycelial growth rate, fruiting body yield and biotransformation rate by a single factor method, and screen the optimal additive amount of tea twigs.The safety contents of main mineral elements in Hericium erinaceus cultivated in tea twigs were determined by ICP-MS,in order to provide a reference basis for the safe utilization of the waste tea twigs for cultivation of Hericium erinaceus.The results showed that the optimum formula of the cultivation material tea twigs for Hericium erinaceus was determined as follow, 12% wood chips, 48% tea twigs, 23% cottonseed shells, 14% wheat bran, 1% glucose, 1% gypsum and 1% superphosphate.When Hericium erinaceus grew on the above tea twigs cultivation material, the mycelial growth rate was 0.90 cm·d^-1,the fruiting body yield was 421.5 g·bag^-1 and the biotransformation rate was 84.29%,which were 1.34,1.11 and 1.10 times relative to the control, respectively.In Hericium erinaceus cultured with tea twigs, the contents of heavy metals such as As, Cd and Pb, major elements such as Na, Mg and K and trace element Ti were higher than the control.The contents of all the detected mineral elements were far below the national standard and were safe for human.