Gnome:
The Turkey Tail Mushroom.
In this issue I would like to discuss a mushroom species which has caused great excitement because of its medicinal properties; it is known as one of the most potent and best studied of all medicinal mushrooms, with many commercial preparations being sold on the market.
Turkey Tail, or Trametes versicolor, is another of those mushrooms that has a virtual worldwide distribution from temperate to tropical zones; I have seen it in every country I have lived. It is one of the most easily identifiable mushrooms, belonging to the family of mushrooms called polypores or bracket fungi.
They are generally thin and leathery when wet but become rigid or slightly flexible when dried. As the species name suggests, the cap colour is extremely variable and can range from a mixture of white, gray, brown, yellowish-buff, bluish, reddish or black in distinct zones (or uniformly) with, sometimes, a white margin when actively growing. This mushroom does not have gills but rather, pores, which appear white to dingy yellowish with minute but visible shallow tubes. This mushroom typically grows in groups, rows, tiers and shelving masses on logs, stumps and fallen branches of dead hardwoods.
If you make use of polewood on your farm, it will commonly appear next to Schizophyllum commune on the same pole after the wood has been out for a season or two. It causes a general delignifying decay of wood and is a common cause for your polewood thatches to collapse after a few years.
Apart from its medicinal properties, which I will describe next, this multicoloured mushroom is very resistant to decay itself and can be used to make beautiful ornaments (if you are into natural forms) such as brooch clips, earrings, necklaces and other ornaments. With regards to edibility, the mycologist, David Arora puts it very succinctly:
“boil for 62 hours, squeeze thoroughly and serve forth!”
A very accurate statement once you have seen this mushroom but nevertheless, perhaps we can reconsider its consumption when we take into account the powerful medicinal properties it has: According to Paul Stamets quoting a number of studies, Trametes versicolor is the source of PSK (protein-bound polysaccharide), which is commercially known as “Krestin,” an approved cancer drug in Asia. According to a number of clinical studies in patients with gastric cancer treated with chemotherapy combined with a regimen of using PSK, there was a decrease in recurrence and an increase in the disease-free survival rate. Another study showed that PSK reduces cancer metastasis and stimulated interleukin production-1 production in human cells. There are also a number of other substances produced by this mushroom which include PSP (low-cytotoxic polysaccharopeptide), a possible antiviral agent inhibiting HIV replication which also induces gamma interferon, interleukin-2, and T-cell proliferation. Other molecules isolated have shown antitumor properties, immunomodulating responses and strong antibiotic properties effective against a number of organisms such as E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida albicans and others pathogenic to humans.
There are a number of commercial products on the market made from this mushroom, usually in the form of powdered fruitbodies in capsules or tea form.
Once you find out how common this mushroom truly is, by taking a walk in your closest jungle or forest, I would suggest picking some, drying it and then extracting it by boiling in water for use in soups or teas. The abundance of research available on this mushroom would suggest that it would benefit all of our lives from incorporating it into our diet.
Go forth and spread the spores!