Turkey Tail Mushroom -Mantis Outdoors

Description

In this video we go through the Turkey tail mushroom at all that's key identifiers we also have a discussion about the look alikes that grow along with this mushroom

Tags: Turkey tail mushroom mantisoutdoors

Video Transcription

[Music]

hey hey guys doing this is William Myers from Mass outdoors back at you with another video and today we're gonna do something that we don't really do very much on this channel is talk about mushrooms I've gotten a lot of comments on hey you know you do all these plant identifications you do all this why not do mushrooms and you know I started early in the channel thinking that I wasn't going to show too many mushrooms because you know stuff it's a lot more risky in my opinion than Wow to them you know be honest with you there really isn't that many poisonous plants out there and they're actually can be kind of difficult to find there that you just really once you know them and can identify them you're really not going to run into them too much and you're not gonna run into much of a trouble with mushrooms there are far more species out there period edible and poisonous than plants mushroom fungi period out outnumber plants tend to one in some in some areas you'll find a one to ten to one is something over five million species of fungi have been identified right now and there's species out there that are still being identified so you know it's something that I was hesitant to do but with all the requests that I've been getting over the last several years I said I've decided to actually start doing a series on some of the mushrooms that I use but distantly and and just for food so that's what we're going to do right now we're gonna start out with one today alright so what we're going to start out today with is the turkey tail mushroom or Jimmy stays various color this is a very important mushroom in my opinion because I used this as well as chaga pretty much on a daily basis for medicinal uses for immune system control boosting there's a lot of medical studies out there that back these claims one thing that I don't do on this channel is you know Express claims that have no scientific backing whatsoever there's a lot of things that I read like books my colpepper cetera et cetera that makes some claims that are one they're very old claims and to this scientifically we just literally cannot back them up but these we can back up there's many many many studies done on turkey tail mushroom Amadou chaga things like that that support the claims that we make and the move that I make and that's one of the reasons why I use them on a daily basis but I'll use this mushroom that I'm going to show you in T's I use it in alcohol or ethanol extractions and like I said on a daily basis alright so when we're talking about turkey tails and the identifying features of turkey tails we need to be aware that there are some look-alikes out there to this mushroom so there is the false turkey tail you know very convenient name right and it looks very similar to a turkey tail but we're going to go through some of the key identifiers to the the actual turkey tail and that will help us out with identifying the false turkey tail I've been walking around here for about two and a half hours and even though false turkey tail is about as common if not more common than the turkey tail I actually haven't been able to find any around here so that's an unfortunate thing might be able to roll in some pitchers possibly of that but like I said once we go through the key identifier of the turkey tail itself you'll be able to we'll be able to have a little bit of a talk about the identification of false turkey tail also something that looks rather similar to turkey tail is the violet tooth polypore and there are some very distinct features that will definitely allow you to say okay this isn't is not a turkey tail this is a violet tooth polypore etc etc so let's go ahead and go over here and look at the turkey tails and see some of the key identifiers of this mushroom alright guys well this is the turkey tail mushroom Jimmy says various color you see all over this down log and you see it on down logs mostly because this is a saprophyte which means it gets its nutrients apathetically this is classed as a white rot fungus which means that it consumes and helps break down the linden cellulose hemicellulose which are cell wall compounds of down trees which these are incredibly important to the ecosystem because if it wasn't for fungus like this and the many other fungus like this you just have to breathe literally just covering the the forest floor alright guys so this is a at least for this time of year this is a pretty decent specimen of the turkey tail you can see these persist year round but you can see why it's called a turkey tail because it exactly looks like a Turkey's tail those concentric rings of color usually you'll see white on the ends this time of year maybe get a little darker a little yellow but one of the key features of this mushroom is that if you flip it over you'll see under here you'll see that it's white this is an older specimen so up here you can see that it's turned a little yellow a little brown this is a dried out turkey tail but that white color there and if you can see so if we flip over the turkey tail we can see that it doesn't really have gills it has all these hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of little poor surfaces and this mushroom is a polypore there's a lot of specimens and the polypore family this is one of them and that's how it drops its poor it's from these little tubes that are on the undersurface so a false turkey tail will just be completely flat all the way around and almost like a quirk consistency it doesn't have this poor surface and it's not white on the other side it would be more yellow and flat I really wish I could find a false turkey tail around here but doesn't like I said I've been looking for quite a while haven't been able to find find anything so as you can see if I look over here there are some more turkey tails and it is May right now and these are pretty dried up this isn't really the growing season here in about 30 days if not a little bit more maybe into June we're gonna start seeing some fresh growth but you can see on this down log turkey tail is consuming the tree getting its nutrients from the linden the cellulose and hemicellulose of the tree itself you know like I said in the beginning of this video turkey tail is a very important mushroom to me I use it almost on a daily basis as part of my health schedule you know as long with chaga and extracts from Amadou even mushrooms that don't grow around me like a gerakan etc etc you know I sourced those out from companies that I believe in that trust and I use those on a daily basis as a host defense basically a preventative even a manager some sorts you know this mushroom is really really good for medicinal purposes like I said there is scientific fact that backs these up I don't really like talking about medicinal purposes if there hasn't been a lot of studies done on like some of the plants mmm that you can go out there and read again like some of the more famous books that I've read like colpepper just makes some some claims that just cannot be scientifically backed up so I don't like talking about those but medicinal mushrooms there has been especially in recent years a lot of scientific studies done on them that I've read that really back up the claims that have been made for centuries even millennia millennia actually you know that these you know medicinal mushrooms been used for millennia for things like consumption which we know now to be tuberculosis Mamadou mushroom would be what I'm talking about as far as that goes and scientifically we can back that up as well we're starting to see studies that you know those mushrooms can be shown to have great attributes in those areas turkey tail in fact there in recent studies pretty much everywhere you go and the only reason why I know this is because of my brother unfortunately he passed away from cancer and during chemotherapy we were doing reaiiy was doing research and came upon turkey tail again and it's been shown to have tremendous benefits for people that are going through chemotherapy you know post pre during and post chemotherapy so I mean I encourage you guys to go out there and do your own research but for me just from the past 10 years of me researching mushrooms and and things like that they've the knowledge out there absolutely blows me away so there's something to absolutely be interested in there's mushroom clubs all throughout the country those are really good to get into some very knowledgeable people that are involved with that as well

and you know there's tons of books out there there's tons of people to call that are usually more than willing to help you guys out with you know identification you guys can send me pictures as well and like I always people send me plant pictures people send me mushroom pictures I will do my best to help out however I can I can't mmm-hmm sometimes I can't give you a hundred percent identification so I don't really like doing that online with pictures because you know I'm not there I don't have the specimen in my hands I'm not looking at it but I can get you close and say I think it is this why don't you research and see what you think all right guys well I hope you enjoyed the video just wanted to come out show you guys a mushroom get some icky identifiers going on tell you some of the look-alikes we're gonna be continuing on in this we got some several specimens that we're gonna go through and do some key identifiers for show you how to use them like I said with this turkey tail I like making teas out of there like making ethanol extractions I use that daily actually two times a day I use chalk three times a day I use I'm gonna do two times a day turkey tail two times a day etc etc we'll go through that sometime in another video but I hope you enjoyed the video if you did click like down below and subscribe if you already haven't hopefully we'll see you in the woods so when I'm looking for a turkey tail I'll look on down trees obviously like this like I said it is a saprophyte like it's this nutrients are critically off the dead material yeah there's some old dried up turkey tail on that just walk through the woods I'm not only when I go mushroom honey mom I'm not only looking for one specimen I'm looking up and looking down side to side left right looking for plants garlic mustard may Apple all that stuff here blood root should be all over the place but I haven't seen it in this area yeah you know down tree that's not turkey tail it is a polypore we're gonna get into this in another video this is a polypore some more up there as well polypore is a pretty big fungal family