Turkey Tail Mushroom, Its Look-Alikes, & Medicinal Benefits with Adam Haritan

hey everyone I'm Adam Harrison from learn your land and in this particular video which I'm really excited to sharing with you we are going to be discussing one of my favorite medicinal mushrooms and that is true Metis versicolor or the turkey tail fungus and this is a mushroom that I've gotten to know pretty intimately over the past couple of years and it's one that currently forms a pretty significant portion of my medicinal strategy and so we're going to discern between the turkey tail fungus when talking about its identification and discern between it and two of its look-alikes which is the false turkey tail and the violet tooth polypore now if you're new to mushroom hunting or you've been watching these videos and you're saying Adam I can never find these species that you're discussing well I'll bet that after watching this video so stick with it watch it to the end but if you go outside you will find at least one of these species today it's not two or all three they're that commonly found and so I belong to the western Pennsylvania mushroom Club and it's a fantastic organization you've got a mushroom Club in your area I highly encourage you to join it but we have a club species lifeless so it's a list of all the species that we've ever found on all of our walks in all of our forays and next to each species on this list is a number and that number is a percentage that represents the frequency with which we have found this mushroom and all of our walks in all of our forays the top three mushrooms that we encounter on our walks and under forays include the turkey tail fungus which is actually number two and in two of its look-alikes which is number one and number three anyway if you are interested in learning more about turkey tail how to identify it maybe you've been confused for some time hopefully this video will alleviate any concern that you may have had so first up we're going to talk about turkey tail then we're going to talk about the false turkey tail the violet tooth polypore and perhaps some medicinal benefits as well turkey tail or tomatoes versicolor this is one of our great decomposers and our forests it's very good at breaking down the lignin in wood so this is known as a white broth fungus there are many species that are white rot fungi and they break down the lignin they can also break down to some degree the cellulose and hemicellulose these are plant cell wall compounds you got to figure whenever there's dead wood out here there's a lot of nutrients locked up in that wood and very few organisms can actually break down the lignin but various species of fungi can do it and they help to recycle those nutrients back into the soil so thank the universe for turkey tail this is very commonly found throughout North America and you typically want to look on sticks logs stumps fallen branches as well and this is a very thin mushroom but it's not too too too thin it's then to some degree in its leathery and it looks like a Turkey's tail and so if you think of what a Turkey's tail might look like and then picture that on a branch or a stump it's kind of what turkey tail looks like so I've got a log right here of turkey tail and you can see that it's got multicolored concentric zones so it's got bands of color typically you're seeing Reds you're seeing Browns you're seeing grays sometimes you're seeing blues and sometimes you're seeing purple they're not just seeing things out on the void I mean you're actually seeing this on the mushroom it could be a very beautiful and a very colorful mushroom in every species that I find is different no - turkey tail species look alike and so it's a flexible mushroom you can bend it back and forth when it's fresh when it's dry it's not so flexible it's a bit stiff but when it's fresh you can bend it back and forth whenever you touch this mushroom you will feel that it's slightly velvety or hairy but it's not too too hairy there is a look-alike nostra meanies hair Ceuta and that's much hairier you can always see that with your naked eye this you can't see too well the hairiness but you could feel it almost feels like leather so that's what the cap looks like and this mushroom typically grows in rosettes or shelf like bracket like clusters when you turn this mushroom upside down you will see when it's fresh that it is white so that's a key identifying characteristic for turkey tail first notice that the cap has multicolored concentric zones but on the underside this is a key identifying characteristic it's white and it contains thousands of tiny microscopic pores so this is a nepali pork family this is a polypore mushroom and those pores are the ends of from where the spores are dispersed as this ages though you will see that the white will turn slightly yellowish to brownish but when it's fresh throughout most the growing season you're going to see that it's white also you will notice that these pores on the underside are very very close together it almost looks completely flat so they're white and they're very very close together unlike other poly pores you might see that they're wider it appearance or angular or you might even see gills on the bottom of mushrooms that look like this but there are no gills it's completely flat and it's made up of thousands of tiny microscopic pores that are very close together and there's not really any stem to this fungus either it's just attached to the wood you can typically find it in deciduous or mixed Woodlands typically on sticks logs stumps maybe in the wounds of trees but it's helping to break down a lot of the lignin cellulose and the Hemi cellulose in the wood the season as I mentioned before is typically June that's when I start seeing it here at least in western Pennsylvania new fruiting bodies all the way till about January or February but you will typically find it all year round it'll just dry up from about February March and April before the new season starts anyway key identifying characteristics again look for the multicolored concentric zones on the top it's kind of leathery in velvety it's flexible when fresh and on the underside you will see that it's white it's completely flat a lot of tiny microscopic pores and if you have all these characteristics and the mushroom kind of looks like this and you probably have turkey tail Tomatoes versicolor so the second fungus that we are going to be discussing is the aptly named false turkey tail steer iam Australia now unlike the true turkey tail which is a polypore and on the underside it contains pores and the services white this one is not a poly pomona shelf like bracket looking fungus this one is actually a crust fungus or a courtesy oily fungus and courtesy ID or the crust or parchment fungi that are named because they kind of resemble bark and they grow on the bark and they kind of look like paint stains on wood which look a little bit closer you'll see that's not actually paint it's actually a fungus there are over a thousand species of crusty fungi worldwide this one's pretty easy to identify because it actually puts out a cap like surface that kind of looks like the true turkey tail so this one grows typically right around true turkey coat honestly on this log right behind me I did find some true turkey tail but this one cerium Australia is pretty much blanketing the rest of the log it kind of looks like turkey tail it's got the same kind of appearance it's kind of velvety on top it's got the multicolored concentric zones but typically it's more reddish and brownish and unlike turkey tail which is typically flat styria austria the false turkey tail is almost funnel shaped it kind of curls up and you'll see it almost looks like a petal coming up out of the wood that's typically what it looks like when you see a lot of it on a log and it's about two inches to three inches wide and so is turkey tail as well the turkey tail and false target now they can get a little bit bigger but typically they're about two inches wide now on the underside is the key identifying characteristic to discern between the false turkey tail and the true turkey tail remember the true turkey tail is white and it has pores especially when it's fresh as it gets older it turns a little yellowish brownish the false turkey tail however is not full of pores is completely flat because remember it's a crust fungus a quart isseo fungus and it's not completely white so it's more tannish reddish brownish so the true turkey tail is whitish and it contains pores on the underside and the false turkey tail even though it looks like it on top on the underside you will see that a panitch reddish brownish its habitat is pretty much the same you'll find it in deciduous and mixed woodland you'll find them on sticks logs and stumps and it is a white rot fungus as well so it's helping to break down lignin cellulose the Hemi cellulose and this log right here in the season overlaps you can find it pretty much June all the way to December January February for fresh fruiting bodies but you will find it overwintering and it will dry up it'll get nice and brittle and crunchy kind of like a true turning tail but remember I'll say it again that the true turkey tail it's got the multicolored concentric zones on the top it's leathery but on the underside that one is white and it's got pores because it's a polypore mushroom the false turkey tail however does not have pores on the underside and it's a little darker in appearance on the bottom it's reddish brownish tannish so the third and final species we'll be discussing today is the violet tooth polypore capped them by form this is the most common fungus that we encounter on our Watson Flores with the western Pennsylvania mushroom Club so that means number two was turkey tail number three was the false turkey tail you can see it's saturating this log right here and that's what it typically does in the forest what's interesting about this log is that these specimens are actually arranged perpendicular to the forest floor which is not how you usually see polypore mushrooms which means this tree probably just fell down so it's going to take some time for this fungus to reorient itself because it wants to optimize spore dispersal and it is optimized one is completely horizontal to the forest floor anyway this kind of looks like the turkey tail at least from the top it's got multicolored concentric zones however the colors are more subdued so you're seeing a lot of whites you're seeing some grays and some Browns not much more color typically than that the margin however sometimes is violet and it won't always be that conspicuous you might have to look at it up close you might not even see it at all it's kind of leathery in appearance and these are typically a little smaller than turkey tail mushrooms these are about 2 inches or less whereas turkey tail are typically two or three sometimes even four inches across now the key identifying characteristic like with the false turkey tail is on its underside this will help you discerned between this mushroom and a turkey tail mushroom so this is a polypore mushroom it's not gonna be completely flat but these pores on the underside essentially stretch themselves out and they almost look like teeth on the bottom and so it's not completely poured out like you would see in a turkey tail fungus it's not completely flat like you would see in a false turkey tail but it's got teeth that kind of spread apart from one another in these teeth at least when this fungus is wet and young you will see that it is violet colored or purple colored as as much more mature to kind of lose some of that violet hue but you could still kind of make it out if you look at it closely and you can kind of see that there's a violet hue going on here but you're not always going to see it and like the turkey tail this typically inhabits deciduous woodlands and this species in particular captain by form likes hardwood logs sticks and so closely related species struck a stump a Viet tanam however that one is usually found on conifer logs and sticks and stumps but because this is a black birch I'm fairly confident in identifying this as true captain by form now this does have some medicinal qualities not much there was a paper published in the late 40s 1940s that isolated a compound known as bi for Minik acid and that was shown to have antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus most people don't use it for medicinal mushroom but it is an important decomposer of our deciduous wood and our lignin here in a forest in western Pennsylvania again this is true captain by form the violet tooth polypore it's going to look like turkey tail on the top but on the underside you're going to see that it's violet it's not completely white and there are little teeth that's spread apart now as I alluded to before turkey tail is one of the premier medicinal mushrooms out there this has been used for centuries in traditional Asian medicine and it's one of the most well researched fungi out there not just for its beneficial effects on humans but also on the land so this is a great detoxifier of for example polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of PCBs and also synthetic dyes but when it works in our bodies we see that a lot of research is being done on compounds known as beta glucans and these make up the cell walls of fungi essentially polymers of glucose are also found in various species of bacteria also some plants and what they do is they work in our bodies pharmacologically as immune system regulator so they can stimulate certain processes like Vega psychosis natural killer cell activity macrophage activity but they can also help to suppress for example pro-inflammatory cytokine release and on a macro level we see that turkey town its beta glucans have anti-cancer properties against lung cancer against gastric cancer and also colorectal cancer now there have been quite a few studies on turkey tail over the years and perhaps one of the most impressive was a recent one published in is RN oncology in 2012 funded in part by the National Institutes of Health what they found was that up to six grams of turkey tail led to faster immune recovery in women with breast cancer after they received radiotherapy and back in 2002 the journal of clinical pharmacology essentially summarized the research on turkey tail in human health what they concluded was this and I quote them the clinical efficacy of the turkey tail extracts after oral administration has been demonstrated in more than 30 clinical trials in which significant improvement in both survival rate in general health status was generally observed in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy and or radiotherapy so as you can see this is quite an impressive fungus one of the most interesting species out there in my opinion it's so common but in my opinion not a lot of people give it enough credit so I encourage you to go out there and look for this mushroom and maybe do more research on it and see if it may become an ally in your life if not today then hopefully one day soon I really don't think you have anything to by befriending this particular species comedians versicolor thanks so much for watching this video I hope you learned something about turkey tail and its local likes the false turkey tail and violet tooth polypore there's anything that I didn't address and there are always things that I don't address I can't cover everything I mean I can only cover maybe point zero zero zero zero zero one percent of everything that anybody could ever cover about mushrooms but if I forgot anything please feel free to reach out and I'd love to help you as best I can you want to head on over to learn your landcom I'd appreciate it you can sign up for the newsletter we can stay in touch that way also if you're on YouTube feel free to subscribe to my youtube channel so you can stay up to date with all the videos that I plan on releasing thanks again I hope this was fun watching for you is a lot of fun making this video and hope you learn something I'll see you on the next video you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 524,768

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Turkey Tail, Trametes versicolor, False turkey tail, Violet toothed polypore, Stereum ostrea, Trichaptum biforme, God, Nature, Universe, Mushroom, Mushroom Hunting, Foraging, Wild Food, Wild Foodism, Foraging Pittsburgh, Western Pennsylvania, McConnells Mill State Park, Arthur Haines, Paul Stamets, Gary Lincoff, David Wolfe, Stuart Wilde, Daniel Vitalis

Id: tvOvKc4jqBY

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2016