turkey tail

jasper lee

There’s a lightness to the margin where light pools in your velveteen hairs. And how the felted feathers spill from the wounded wood in autumn! Oh, and what is a wound but a chance to heal? In her you can see a slow, enveloping primacy that rings like cut crystal across a pond. Sometimes I even see myself reflected in her. Satin shelves and soft fractals. So teach me to answer questions with questions. Let me find strength in softness. Let me be porous like wood.

Etymology: Trametes versicolor, roughly meaning the thin, multi-colored one.

Properties: T. versicolor is a cosmopolitan, saprobic to weakly parasitic, white-rot fungus found in forests all over the globe. It’s cap colors are variable, ranging from blue to brown to green to gray, but it often has a color and shape reminiscent of a turkey’s tail. These distinctive colors are determined in part by the mineral content of the wood they are decaying, and they can be used to create natural dyes with blueish-green hues. The texture of turkey tail is similar to suede, and its flesh is tough and fibrous. The surface of the mushroom is covered in a fine, velvet-like texture and the bottom has minute pores. It has a long history of use in traditional medicine and is known affectionately as yun zhi in China and karawatake in Japan. Their polysaccharides, polyphenols and flavonoids are purported to be immunomodulatory, anti-tumor and antiviral. A comforting, brothy tea reminiscent of aged puerh can be made from the boiled flesh. 

Companions: Turkey Tails are partial to hardwood hosts throughout their range, but can be found associated with conifers from time to time. As early colonizers, they pave the way for a wider variety of wood-rotting fungi to take hold in novel environments. They are powerful decomposers of lignin, so they help to create the nutrients and space needed for new growth in a forest. Through decomposition, T. versicolor helps create habitat for cavity nesting birds and bugs. While they are considered inedible for humans, turkey tails are an important food source for fungus moths, gnats and maggots. 

Recipe: Turkey Tail Tea

Sound Design: Jasper Lee