Exploring the Synergy Between Medicinal Mushrooms and Vortexes

A multimedia journey of gorgeous landscape, mushroom hunting, poem and music… join me in a journey of Land Listening. Enter into our wilderness world and allow a piece of it to take seed in your heart…

The Birch Polypore fungus has anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-tumor and anti-viral properties.

You can cut it into strips and boil it for 40-60 minutes to make a pot of tea. Or you can soak the strips in grain alcohol to create a medicinal tincture. However, recent data suggests that tea (a decoction) may be the better way of extracting the medicinal properties of mushrooms like reishi, shiitake and birch polypore.

“Teas are a good way to use medicinal mushrooms, and they should be simmered until the tea is somewhat dark and strong-tasting— about 40 minutes to an hour.” – Christopher Hobbs PhD

If you would like to see all the uses of the amazing birch polypore, here’s a good video by a Scotsman who will show you how he makes tea, uses it as a knife strop, as an ember carrier, as a wound dressing, and how to harvest it:

“Over the millennia, trial and error experimentation has resulted in the fungus being used in a number of interesting practical applications. Perhaps the most unusual of these is the etiology of the alternative name of razor-strop fungus. The cap or pileus of the fruiting body has a hard, leathery upper surface. This surface can be peeled off in strips and was used in this form as a strop for sharpening razors and also as a natural emery cloth for polishing metal to achieve an ornamental sheen.

A second major functionality is associated with the dense, corky mass of the interior flesh of the fruiting body. Like the Tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius), the fibrous and sere mass of the Birch fungus was used with a spark producing implement to start a fire at a new campsite.

It was also used and as a means to maintain and transport embers from one campsite to another in order to obviate the need to repeat the sometimes difficult fire initiation process.

The corky nature of the Birch polypore was also employed in other applications in which absorption was required such as vulnerary dressings, ink blotters, haberdashery sweat bands , and even as a mounting platform for securing the impaling pins used in insect collections.” – Hiker’s Notebook (Hiker, Master Naturalist, Smithsonian Docent, Scientist, Engineer – not necessarily in that order)

And here is the poem at the end of my video, in case you would like to share it – perhaps create your own video for your social media and layer these words over top of the images of your own beautiful land…

The Land is my Body

This land is my body
we are not separate
we are linked, enmeshed, in resonance

Whatever I do to her
I do to me
Her triumphs
are my joy

Her pain
is my wound
my sadness
my loss

This land
these trees
and grasses
and fungi
and insects
and birds
bear, wolf, coyote, cougar, horse, skunk, marmot, deer, elk
OH so much life!

I am ONE with all of life
We are love
We are joy
We are resilient

(c) 2022 Jini Patel Thompson. Feel free to share with author or website credit.