I dye with fomes, it's a decent green with copper, but I did try it as tea……stick with the Tetley
Piptoporus betulina (the razorstrop) makes truly excellent plasters, and it too will sustain an ember, sort of, it's not as good as the Devil's hoof nail. Chewing a piece of it is like sooking a germolene soaked bit of polystyrene
but it is reputed to both ease a sore throat and to kill hunger pangs.
Chaga does grow in the UK, we all know it grows in the UK, but it's relatively rare here. It's also under threat from commercial pickers who get paid buttons by folks who sell it on for pounds per gram…..£18 for 50g on Amazon….the folks who collect it for them get paid about £10 a kilo…..now work out the profit on that… or better yet from a supplier of survival kits and the like £6.45 for 10g of powder….that's the dust we get when we saw up a lump.
There is a quiet (well it has been so far, but I'm fed up of the rip off prices getting free reign) network among us that will supply quality chaga to those of our own who need it. It's a traditional anti-cancer tea. It doesn't cure, but it seems to help those suffering chemotherapy or recovering from surgery, etc.,
There are enough of us who know where to find the fungus, and who will quietly and without fuss provide it for as long as necessary, and we do it in the certain knowledge that others among us went out of their way to help in any way they could when folks in our families were ill with that curse of a disease.
Those who are profiteering from collecting the native fungus can just damned well cough up and pay the prices to import it from countries where it is very common. It's actually relatively cheap to import from both Northern Europe and Northern America. $50 or so for 1lb for 'high' quality….about 75p for 10g, as opposed to those extortionate UK prices.
I think that's enough profit for anyone, don't you ? but then, I don't sell chaga.
Anyway, rant over
and I'll go and be good. Put the kettle on.
M