The Real Tea about PNW Reishi

So my husband and I have taken to using what naturally occurs on our property. He’s made a tincture from young cedar that when a few drops are put into a pot of boiling water clears sinuses. We’ve made a tincture of devil’s club that when added to a bloody mary gives a lovely cilantro + celery punch. He’s even made his own beeswax salve that we both love for dry skin in the winter (None of us are getting younger here.).

But with early fall later summer and the few isolated rains we get here it’s oddly mushroom season. Normally our property has an abundance of inedible mycorrhizal mushrooms and a few insipid edibles that flush in the rains of October but every now and again in spring and summer we see a flush like this and we found something we haven’t encountered before: PNW’s Reishi!

More scientifically known as Ganoderma Oregonense these mushrooms are a relative of Ganoderma Tsugae and Ganoderma Lucidum both of which have long been used in Chinese Medicine and are just beginning to be studied by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for several applications but some of the most promising are their ability to inhibit cancerous cell growth and their ability to help with diabetes.

So when my husband texted me a photo of the top of the cap and one of its pores beneath I was very excited. Oregonense are pretty easy to ID and don’t with their tell elephant skin texture on top and white pores beneath. Younger specimens have that ruddy russet coming out from the middle with that yellow to white fade. As they age they all turn to be completely ruddy russet eschewing the white and yellow borders of their youth. They are known for having white undersides that are pored rather than gilled. Like many mushrooms they bruise a ruddy/russet color. They aren’t known to have any toxic lookalikes here in the PNW. NOTE: This is just a little about IDing PNW Reishi, do your own research before trying any foraged mushroom and always use a group to double confirm before consuming ANY wild mushroom!

Needless to say, we’ll likely try the tea and see if we enjoy it. Hey maybe we’re even trendy. Even the New York Times (NYT) has a recipe for how to brew the tea from dried mushrooms. I’m pretty old hat at drying out mushrooms via threading and hanging them so I’m going to try to slice and dry this bad boy and see what we get.

Anyone else interested in mushroom teas or other foraging edibles? No, just me? Well, bone apple tea, Y’all!