Derek

Turkey tail mushroom (trametes versicolor) is a wonderful beginner friendly mushroom to forage, great for kids to get involved

Let’s get straight into how to identify it:
- it should be fan shaped and resemble a turkey’s tail
- a bracket mushroom
- concentric varying colour circles, outer is always white
- it has pores underneath (polypore mushroom) that are white, False Turkey tail have brown pores not white
- underneath must be white
- the top should feel leathery or velvety
- it does not have gills underneath or no sponges or spikes on top

Remember the true organism lives with in the fallen log or the tree that you are looking to harvest from. The mushrooms are the fruit. This is a fungus that eats away at the lignin parts of the tree, these are the parts that help fight disease and bugs in the tree.
The fungus turns these into polysaccharides which have been widely researched. There are fantastic talks online from @paulstamets discussing the benefits it can have for people going through chemotherapy. It has been used for an immunity boost, to support people with low energy, reduce fatigue, boost gut health and possibly support weight loss by managing blood sugar levels. It has no psycho active compounds.

My One Minute Gardener harvested these mushrooms for me by gently pulling them from the tree without impacting the bark and taking only a tiny amount. They were brought home, washed clean and left them on the windowsill to take in some of the suns energy to create more vitamin D. We dried these further in the oven, low and slow. Once cooled it was blended down.

We can now add this to tea, soups, stews and many more recipes.
Do you use turkey tail in any recipes?

As always be 100% sure when identifying mushrooms or any wild food

#turkeytailmushroom #turkeytail #mushrooms #mushroomhunting #fungi #fungusamongus #immuneboost #naturalmedicine #naturalhealth #herbalism #wildling #growwild #foraging #forager #getoutside #nature #sustainability #sustainableliving #beginnerfriendly #newbieforager #gardengram #naturelove #learningisfun #naturenerd #forestmagic #forestwalk #midwinter #forestbathing #wildfood #wildmedicine