Thanksgiving Turkey Tail Mushrooms Fight Cancers and Contaminants

Summary: Thanksgiving turkey tail mushrooms supply thanksgivers with casseroles, salads, soups and teas and woodlands with pollution-reducing nutrient recycling.

turkey tails mushrooms (Trametes versicolor); Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, Lincoln County, Central Coast region, Oregon; May 6, 2003: Ron Exeter/Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington (BLMOregon), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Thanksgiving turkey tail mushrooms, a fungal species native to North America, assume high profiles continent-wide in time for Thanksgiving celebrations in Anglophone-loving areas of Mexico, in Canada and in the United States.

The Thanksgiving fruiting body bears its common name because of its special prominence in late November's woodlands and because of its turkey tail-like colors and shapes. It can be considered drinkable as a tea complemented by flavorful, non-mushroom-smelling ingredients and edible as a fresh snack or in a casserole, sauce and soup. Collaborative research at Bastyr University in Kenmore, Washington and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and traditional medicine in China and Japan describe human health benefits.

Bract-like, fungal Thanksgiving turkey tail mushrooms encourage back-to-nature lifestyles as emanators of blue and green fabric and wool dyes and extractors of environmental pathogens and pollutants.

Thanksgiving turkey tail mushrooms flourish year-round as rosettes basally clustered on branches, logs and stumps in hardwood forests and open woodlands and sometimes in coniferous stands.

The polypore group member grabs chemical pollutants and heavy metals from air, soil and water and Escherichia coli bacteria and poisonous mercury ions from woodland waters. It hinders proliferation of anthracenes, candida albicans, chromated copper arsenate, cryptococcus neoformans, dimethyl phosphonate, dioxin, listeria monocytogenes, organophosphates, pentachlorophenols, pseudomonas aeruginosa, staphylococcus aureus and streptococcus pneumoniae. Its ecofriendliness, as kawaratake in Japanese, Trametes versicolor (thin-sectioned, several-colored) scientifically and yun zhi in Chinese, includes recycling food chain and web nutrients from decaying wood.

Thanksgiving mushrooms, described by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778) and Kentucky-born mycologist Curtis Gates Lloyd (July 17, 1859-Nov. 11, 1926), jumpstart immunity.

Polysaccharide-K keeps immunity strong in patients with cervical, colorectal, liver, prostate and stomach cancers, hepatatis B and C, leukemia, malaria and non-small- and small-cell lung carcinomas.

Phase I Clinical Trial of Trametes versicolor Women with Breast Cancer, in the 2012-published International Scholarly Research Notices (ISRN) Oncology journal, lists breast cancer recovery properties. Carolyn Torkelson, Juliette Gay, Mark Martzen, Amy Putiri, Imasa Sasagawa, Leanna Standish, Erin Sweet and Cynthia Wenner mention polysaccharide-K mobilizing natural killer cells against cancerous cells. The two researchers in Minneapolis and six in Kenmore note breast cancer recovery-enhancing killer cell count increases from daily 0.32-ounce (9-gram) Thanksgiving turkey tail mushroom preparations.

Health and Ministry approval and Kureha company patents offer similar optimism despite polysaccharide-K's assorted sugars and attached proteins obstructing standard drug-making's active principal ingredient (API) identification.

Turkey tail mushrooms present three to eight, and related species one to three, gray-white, spore-emitting, unbruised pores, with 0.12-inch- (3-millimeter-) deep tubes per 0.04 inch (millimeter).

The flexible, thin mushroom's 0.12-inch- (3-millimeter-) thick, 3.93-inch- (10-centimeter-) across cap qualifies as circular, kidney-shaped or triangular, with contrasting blue-, buff, cinnamon-, green-, maroon-, orange-colored rings. It retains algae with age, cobwebby, compacted cells called mycelia, contrastingly fuzzy, velvety textural rings and fungus moths (Nemaxera betulinella) and Platypezid fly maggots (Polyprivora picta). Gray-white caps, inflexible shapes, one-colored textural rings and poreless, smooth surfaces respectively separate out otherwise similar-looking Trametes hirsuta, T. ochracea, T. pubescens and Stereum ostrea mushrooms.

Thanksgiving turkey tail mushrooms treat thanksgivers to casseroles, sauces, soups and, when spices tether indistinctive odors and mushroomy tastes, teas and woodlands to pollution-reducing nutrient recycling.

turkey tails; Nescopek State Park, Luzerne County, northeastern Pennsylvania; March 23, 2013: Nicolas A. Tonelli (Nicholas_T), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

turkey tails mushrooms (Trametes versicolor); Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, Lincoln County, Central Coast region, Oregon; May 6, 2003: Ron Exeter/Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington (BLMOregon), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/blmoregon/15491377948/

turkey tails; Nescopek State Park, Luzerne County, northeastern Pennsylvania; March 23, 2013: Nicolas A. Tonelli (Nicholas_T), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholas_t/8585845387/

For further information:

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Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/359197#page/618/mode/1up

Lloyd, Curtis Gates. May 1921. "Trametes Versicolor From Prof. Marcial R. Espinosa, Chile (Fig. 1927)." Mycological Notes (Cincinnati), no. 65: 1045.
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112018144953?urlappend=%3Bseq=407

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Available @ http://www.first-nature.com/fungi/trametes-versicolor.php

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Available @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stamets/mushrooms-cancer_b_1560691.html

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Available @ http://www.iowamushroom.org/featured_mushrooms/Trametes_versicolor

Torkelson, Carolyn J.; Sweet, Erin; Martzen, Mark R.; et al. 2012. Phase I Clinical Trial of Trametes versicolor Women with Breast Cancer. ISRN Oncology Journal, Vol. 2012, Article ID 251632, 7 pages. doi:10.5402/2012/251632.
Available @ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/251632/

"Trametes versicolor." November 1920. Mycological Notes: Plates for No. 65, plate 177, fig. 1927.
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112018144953?urlappend=%3Bseq=366

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Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/100405693

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Available @ http://eattheplanet.org/turkey-tail-a-powerfull-medicinal-mushroom/