Anyone know where to find Chaga Tinda Fungus?

[Toddy]

Detailed response to perception of group taking a stance.

It's still commercial exploitation of a rare resource in our country.

If you want to buy it in bulk for people to 'play with', your best bet is to buy from abroad from countries where it grows in profusion.
The Canadian link above certainly seems cheap enough

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Shark Tinderbox]

Fiona
Would you please point me in the direction of any publications on its use against terminal cancer. We have a close family friend that has terminal liver cancer and I would like to tell him about this please. He has maybe a couple of months but you never know. According to this site in the link, it's the birch chaga but it seems only effective against other kinds of cancer. I wish I had heard about this sooner

I found some more pubs links via the site so I will pass these on

Any help appreciated.

ATB
Craeg

I’m not a doctor, but have you heard of Essiac as a cancer treatment? If you Google Rene Cassie (Essiac spelled backwards) you should see some info about it. I have spent many years being interested it folk medicines and healing remedies and one of the things that I collected was an Essiac formula that you can have. It may be of some use for your friend who has the liver cancer. All of the herbs can be purchased from Baldwins in the Elephant and Castle (London), by post, and it is quite easy to make, tastes quite good and may help, but I’m not a doctor, so what the hell do I know? Sorry, I’m not making light of the situation, I’m just frustrated with allopathic medicine.

 

[Shark Tinderbox]

Detailed response to perception of group taking a stance.

It's still commercial exploitation of a rare resource in our country.

If you want to buy it in bulk for people to 'play with', your best bet is to buy from abroad from countries where it grows in profusion.
The Canadian link above certainly seems cheap enough

cheers,
Toddy

Yours is the last word about commercialism, exploitation and morality, but I would rather buy it from you, knowing your views on the matter, than buy it from abroad, at least you are honest and protective of it as a species.
All the best to you my friend, I hope that we can meet someday and understand each other more.

 

[Toddy]

I think cancer is one of the few areas where I'd take modern medicine as fast as I could tbh. I've seen too many friends 'fight it themselves' and fail so horribly. Once it's 'terminal' though.....if there's anything that we can do to help, happy to find stuff if it will ease anything.

Hear? see the chaga ? does it work as a sparkcatcher after it's been boiled up for tea ? Fomes does once it's dried out from my dyebaths.........in fact that's a very good way of softening the stuff up, and I reckon that's where all the mince comes in about boiling it for three days with month old pee........they got stuff from a dyebath and conflated a dozen different wee details without working it out properly.

cheers,
Toddy

p.s. Mark ? are you American perchance ?

 

[Retired Member southey]

I think cancer is one of the few areas where I'd take modern medicine as fast as I could tbh. I've seen too many friends 'fight it themselves' and fail so horribly. Once it's 'terminal' though.....if there's anything that we can do to help, happy to find stuff if it will ease anything.

Hear? see the chaga ? does it work as a sparkcatcher after it's been boiled up for tea ? Fomes does once it's dried out from my dyebaths.........in fact that's a very good way of softening the stuff up, and I reckon that's where all the mince comes in about boiling it for three days with month old pee........they got stuff from a dyebath and conflated a dozen different wee details without working it out properly.

cheers,
Toddy

p.s. Mark ? are you American perchance ?

HA! never even though about why it would be in pee! Cheers Toddy

 

[Toddy]

Stale piddle = ammonia, which is a brilliant cleansing and degreasing liquid. Wool needs to be degreased before it'll take dye well.
Ammonia is alkaline, so the whole thing all pulls together and instead of, " just boil it soft and work it with something alkaline", it became some poor sod boiling it up for three days and nights in stale pee.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Stringmaker]

The Romans used to have "collecting vessels" on street corners for that very use.

 

[tinderbox]

Pee was also used in waulking tweed, to shrink it.

 

[Shark Tinderbox]

I think cancer is one of the few areas where I'd take modern medicine as fast as I could tbh. I've seen too many friends 'fight it themselves' and fail so horribly. Once it's 'terminal' though.....if there's anything that we can do to help, happy to find stuff if it will ease anything.

Hear? see the chaga ? does it work as a sparkcatcher after it's been boiled up for tea ? Fomes does once it's dried out from my dyebaths.........in fact that's a very good way of softening the stuff up, and I reckon that's where all the mince comes in about boiling it for three days with month old pee........they got stuff from a dyebath and conflated a dozen different wee details without working it out properly.

cheers,
Toddy

p.s. Mark ? are you American perchance ?

No Toddy I’m not an American, just a good old Yorkshire man, living in Kent.

As for conflating stories about the processes of Amadou production, you may be right, I for one only ever tried making Amadou with pee once, I nearly vomited at the smell. However, I know that urine was collected back in the days of gunpowder for the production of Salt Petre, and that Salt Petre aids in making certain forms of tinder catch a spark better.

As for using Chaga for fire lighting after it has been used as a refreshing tea, I can confirm that it does work, and just as well … I am an ardent believer, being a Yorkshire man, that nothing should ever go to waste.

Cheers, my friend,

 

[Husky]

How fast does the chaga grow and after harvesting the piece that protrudes from the tree, does it keep growing or is this "fruit" ruined?

 

[tinderbox]

A chaga infection might take twenty years to kill a tree, it usually takes a few years for the conks to appear. They only release their spores when the tree dies, and the conks fall to the ground. The best way to get a conk is to chisel round its perimeter and lever it off. To the best of my knowledge the conk doesn't regrow.

 

[Toddy]

It's slow growing.
The chaga is actually the mycellium that eventually ends up feeding the bits that produce the spores when the tree is dead.

Those who forage mushrooms take great effort not to damage the mycellium since that's what the fungi grow from. The fungi we usually collect are the fruiting bodies, but chaga's a different fish altogether.

Google will throw up thousands of links, full of clear photos.
Wiki link though for simplicity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inonotus_obliquus

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Shark Tinderbox]

How fast does the chaga grow and after harvesting the piece that protrudes from the tree, does it keep growing or is this "fruit" ruined?

I don’t know how fast it actually grows, but I believe that it takes a few years to become large enough to be harvested after the initial infection of the tree, and that the bigger it is the older it is. Since the Chaga conk is the fruiting body of the fungus, or at least the trees response to the parasitical infection, when you see a conk on a tree it means that the tree is as good as dead, or it will be within a few years. Once a tree has become infected and the conks begin to show there are often several of them growing on the tree, and I presume as is the case with other forms of fungi such as Chicken of the Woods or the Razor Strop fungus, that the fungi will keep on growing and producing conks season after season or for as long as the tree can support the nutritional needs of the fungus.

If anyone knows better, or more about the life cycle of Chaga, I am always ready to learn!

 

[mountainm]

My silver birch at home has something similar growing where the main trunk has split into 2 boughs - I always thought it was just scarring though - it's more flat in nature. Is there anyway for sure to ID it?

 

[Shark Tinderbox]

My silver birch at home has something similar growing where the main trunk has split into 2 boughs - I always thought it was just scarring though - it's more flat in nature. Is there anyway for sure to ID it?

Lots of Silver Birch have this, it is not usually anything to do with a Chaga fungal infection. This infection is only usually seen, within the UK that is, way up in Scotland where it is a lot cooler than in England. Silver Birch in the south are only usually infected with the white looking Birch Polypore or Razor Strop bracket fungi (Piptoporus betulinus). I believe it is the same with the Horses Hoof fungus (fomes fomentarius), which again prefers the cooler climates of Scotland - within the boundaries of the UK that is.

 

[Toddy]

Fomes (horses hoof) grows where it's wet.
Chaga grows really cold.
Razerstrop grows damp and like fomes can be found on other species.

Razerstrop and fomes are bracket fungus, they are fruiting bodies, chaga isn't.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[ex-member BareThrills]

Do unto others including plants only what you would have done to yourself (chopped up and set on fire, eeek)

Seriously though, some of the Canadian suppliers may be pretty ethical as Canada takes the environment very seriously. You never know till you try so i wouldn't dismiss it completely without research.

 

[tinderbox]

Chaga is as much symbiotic as it is parasitic. It forms a localised infection, and the skin helps prevent infection by more virulent fungi which spread throughout the tree.

 

[ex-member BareThrills]

Fomes (horses hoof) grows where it's wet.
Chaga grows really cold.
Razerstrop grows damp and like fomes can be found on other species.

Razerstrop and fomes are bracket fungus, they are fruiting bodies, chaga isn't.

cheers,
Toddy

Plenty of hoof in the Midlands which grows mainly on Ash where i see it. Tons of polypore on the Birch round my way too. I harvest quite a lot when the kids at the local park smash it off the trees for fun. Often wonder about getting a throwing knife to treat them to the same fate as the fungus

 

[Shark Tinderbox]

Fomes (horses hoof) grows where it's wet.
Chaga grows really cold.
Razerstrop grows damp and like fomes can be found on other species.

Razerstrop and fomes are bracket fungus, they are fruiting bodies, chaga isn't.


cheers,
Toddy

I have been harvesting brackets in one form or another for donkeys years and the difference between damp and wet environments, in my experience, is indistinguishable one from the other, I have always found woodland to be both wet and damp. As for Chaga only growing where it is cold, I have it on good authority, i.e. from someone I dealt with a few years back, whose parent works for the Forestry Commission, that he could collect Chaga and Fomes from the same local in Scotland, which I presume was therefore both cold and wet enough to sustain both species. Anyhow, being a soft southerner, I always believed that Scotland was wet, cold and damp all year round at least it was when I went there with the Royal Artillery, so I always presumed that these fungi grew all over Scotland.

In my experience although many of the woodland, down south, have a variety of brackets growing on a variety of trees only the Birch Polypore grows on Silver Birch hence its name, I will qualify this by saying that I have never found it growing on anything else other than Silver Birch in the parts of the world that I usually frequent. The Horses Hoof fungus, I can say I have never seen growing on Silver Birch down south, but I have seen it growing on other trees.

Cheers,