Part 2: Mushrooms for health and wealth

Redp-Belted Polypore

image credit: Daniel Chauvin

Anyone acquainted with J.R.R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings knows that Hobbits are especially fond of mushrooms. In the bookThe Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo had a run-in with Farmer Maggot after trespassing on his mushroom-abundant land as a child. Chased away by his hounds all the way to Bucklebury Ferry, Frodo quivers at the thought of stepping foot on old Maggots land again. Long since over his grudge, Farmer Maggot gifts the hobbits with an ample supply of his famous mushrooms for their journey.

Anyone who has experienced the mushroom madness has probably ventured forth beyond the pale of borders and fences to hunt the meaty mushrooms, which always seems to entail some kind of adventure or occasionally, misadventure.

Mushroom hunting gets us out of our comfort zone, when the gnarly wet weather hits full-tilt in the fall, and opens us toward exploring our home rain forests and streambeds in anticipation of bounty!

A pan of butter fried wild mushrooms is hard for the inner-Hobbit to resist. Edible mushrooms should always be cooked to make them digestible, palatable and safe. They have thick cell walls that our digestive systems cannot easily break down in raw form. Cooking also releases their beneficial nutrients and destroys potentially harmful bacteria or toxic components that may be lurking in the mushroom or from the forest floor. Pan-frying poisonous mushrooms does not make them any more palatable and should be left well-alone.

Imagine where human culture would be without the fungi kingdom, which includes the yeasts that give us wines, beers and breads, the molds that we craft our cheeses with, and medicines like penicillin. Beyond edibility, we have some of the most potent forms of natural, wild medicine available to us in the apothecary of a dying tree. tzi the Iceman, Europes oldest preserved mummy, was found with twospecies of bracket or Polypore mushroomsstrung together with leather. One of them was a tinder fungus which was part of a sophisticated fire making kit. The other was a birch fungus which is known for its antibacterial properties. One especially powerful Polypore, the Reishi or Ganoderma Lucidum, known as Lingzhiin Asian medicine is considered the King of Herbs. It also goes by the praiseworthy names ofMushroom of Immortality and Elixir of Life. The author of an old 1596 Taoist herbal medicine book claimed that itpositively affects the life-energy, orQiof the heart, repairing the chest area and benefiting those with a knotted and tight chest. Taken over a long period of time, agility of the body will not cease, and the years are lengthened to those of the Immortal Fairies.

Some of our own local medicinal polypores include our reishi, Ganoderma oregonense, Turkey Tails, Artist Conks and Red-Belted Polypores. These bracket funguses are said to be anti-bacterial, anti-

A few species of the polypores are edible, such as the meaty sounding Hen of the Woods, Sheep Polypore, andChicken of the Woods, which grows in stacks of luminescent orange shelves that gather droplets of dew that taste like lemon juice. Dyers Polypore has been used to dye wool and other fabrics for centuries, in a wide range of rich colours.

One strange fact is that fungi are more closely related to us and other species of the animal kingdom than plants. At some point in our collective evolutionary history, plants split from the path before fungi did. This can be seen in the chitin, the fibrous substance that composes the cell walls of fungi, and the exoskeletons of anthropods.

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Part 2: Mushrooms for health and wealth