I’m in a mushroom mood: CHAGA

I’m in a mushroom mood: CHAGA 🍄[part one] this surprisingly strange sclerotia is one of nature's most potent sources of antioxidants and immune modulating medicines.

A sclerotia is different from the many fruiting body mushrooms we know, love and fear. It is actually a compact, outgrowing mass of hardened mycelium and food reserves that develops to survive environmental extremes like harsh winters.

Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) has been used as a revered medicine since at least the 16th century. It has documented historical use in varied cultures throughout Europe, Russia, Korea, Eastern and Northern Europe, Northern United States, North Carolina mountains and Canada. The name chaga stems from the Russian word czaga, for mushroom or fungus. In Norway, the name for it translates to cancer polypore.

The hard sclerotia looks like cooling lava. It has one of the highest concentrations of the antioxidant melanin. This is visible on the dark black crust that protects the softer, golden amber interior you can see peaking through the cracks.

Chaga has an abundance of other antioxidant constituents, inotodiol, superoxide dismutase, beta-glucans, polysaccharides and vitamin D2 ergosterol.

If we think about mycelium as this beautiful, complex nutrient exchange system, it only makes sense that the mushrooms we love are going to be a product of their environment. This is especially true for chaga, with some of its major active constituents, actually coming from the wonderful birch trees it grows on- betulin, betulinic acid.

How to sustainability harvest and more uses in part 2 post to follow ✨

I’m in a mushroom mood: CHAGA 🍄[part two]

✨Sustainable harvesting✨ is extremely important for chaga! It is a slow grower, taking an estimated 5 years to grow 10” in diameter in good conditions. If you harvest the whole piece, it often will not regrow, or not regrow fast enough on the already compromised birch hosting it. A good practice is to take only an easily breakable portion of the sclerotia, without severing the whole piece at its attachment point. Anything smaller than an apple, let it grow! As always with wild harvesting, it should be done consciously, with respect, permission, gratitude and only when you see it growing around abundantly.

In the first picture here, if you look closely at the bottom of the chaga you can see the golden highlight where I removed the small piece I harvested from this big mama specimen.

The not so LOOK A LIKES. Like any other mushroom or plant you learn, once you know what it looks like, you will not confuse it with the look-a-likes, but it takes time and wrong IDs along the way, as you train your eye and learn the clear distinctions.

👉Chaga is NOT a tree burl: although they are often caused by a fungal stress on the tree, they are rounded outgrowths of the actual tree, with a barky exterior and hard woody inside.

👉Chaga is also NOT the same as the black knot fungus that can grow in poo clumps around smaller twigs and branches of the tree.

🖤 Chaga will develop in a damaged, cracked or exposed part of the tree and extend out from there, often with a more pointed or jagged shape. It grows almost exclusively on all species of birch trees, but sometimes can be found on other hardwoods like elm, beech and hornbeam.

🖤 And do not doubt- Chaga has direct research on its cancer fighting and antioxidant capacity. And more research is continually being done to expand on our understanding of this potent, ancient medicine. One study showed its ability to arrest the development of and induce cell death in human liver cancer cells (hepatoma HepG2 cells) by affecting many of the same mechanisms we use standard cancer drugs to target, like down-regulating the p53 pathway (and MANY others). PMID: 18203281