Identifying Turkey Tail Mushroom

Description

Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) is a common mushroom that has long been used in folk medicine, and whose virtues are now being studied by modern science. As a cancer medicine and immune booster, Turkey Tail may prove to be extremely powerful. If you wish to use it yourself, do some research on how to use it medicinally, and use this video to help identify the proper mushroom. My ID method was learned from Michael Kuo of MushroomExpert.com (http://www.mushroomexpert.com/trametes_versicolor.html) Be sure to visit his site to double-check your ID, and to learn much more about identifying wild mushrooms!

Visit http://rewildu.com/classes/ for unique educational opportunities in rewilding, wilderness skills, mindfulness, martial arts, primal fitness, homesteading, and more.

Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,Mushroom (Food),Trametes Versicolor (Organism Classification),Turkey Tail Mushroom,Medicinal Mushrooms,Mushrooms for Cancer,Folk Medicine,Natural Healing

Video Transcription

today we're going to learn about turkey tail mushroom this is a very common mushroom it's probably growing near you and it's rather legendary in its medicinal abilities which are also being currently researched and there's a lot of validity it turns out behind those old legend this is a real typical growth habit you can see a rosette growth pattern up here and the layers of fungus over here a fungi first let's learn to identify the turkey tail I am going to be using information from a website that I just love it's called mushroom expert calm Michel cool really really knows his stuff

and makes it simple for anybody to understand mushrooms so I'm going to use his totally true turkey tail test to see if this is really turkey tail number one he asked us to look at the poor surface now some other look-alikes have a different underside you can see here we have maze-like gills really beautiful other Bunji that look similar have have long gills that are not maze-like here we have pores and yes do you definitely have a pore structure and here the answer is a resounding yes number two we're looking at how many pores per millimeter it's kind of a rough estimate but he uses do you have one two three or do you have three to eight another way to think of it is if you have one two three it's going to be fairly large pores here you can see that we have a lot of pores per millimeter we have really small pores but if you step back it's even difficult to see if it has a poor surface but if you come up close sure enough number three is the top surface velvety or hairy or fuzzy and here you should be able to see that we have a really nice fuzzy hair on there but note that there are other species that similarly have a very velvety soft top surface number four he asks us to look at the cap coloration is it gray to whitish in color and then you have a different species turkey tail I usually see it in brown colorations know people have reported it and I've seen photos actually of colors as wild as as bright blue I've heard of it in greens too it will sometimes be sort of a reddish brown as well next we're looking for first starkly in his words starkly contrasting color zones you can see really nice defined lines here where some other fungi have more smooth delineations still contrasting color or lines but definitely not as stark as you have here with the turkey tail and finally check and see if it's if it's rigid and hard again his wording there's some of these shelf Bungie poly pores that will feel almost like they're made of stone the turkey tail is more like badly tanned leather it's very very flexible and when we rip it apart it even has a little bit of the way that leather rips apart in little fibers you

if all of those six points check out then you know that thank you Michael you have totally true turkey tail mushroom now what is this stuff good for this little fungus is a powerful medicine it's my understanding that it's used in Japan right now in conjunction with conventional cancer therapies to great results traditionally it was considered an immune enhancer and a powerful antioxidant and studies seem to be bearing that out there's been a couple clinical trials on I've read one of breast cancer in one in colon cancer where the NK the natural killer cell count really increases when these are used so what that means is that after the radiation therapy these boost one's immune system like anything else that's non conventional medicine you have to go on your own journey with this and and decide you know what part conventional medicine is going to play in your life in what part alternative medicine is going to play in your life let me know about your experiences with turkey tail if you have found it if you have used it and if so how have you done it it's extract tea and have you noticed any effects all right thanks for watching