April 2005
Online Newsletter
Volume 32 - Number 2
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Chaga
The Chaga Story...Part II
Editor’s note: Due to space constraints, part of Ron Spinosa’s “Chaga Story” was edited out of the last newsletter (ref. “Mushrooms in Medicine,” p. 4, Feb. ’05) before the chaga foray. We present the missing part here, followed by Bob Fulgency’s review of the foray.
Very few westerners had heard of “chaga” before Solzhenitzen introduced it in his 1968 novel, The Cancer Ward. In that novel, Sergei Maslennikov, an old country doctor from the Alexandrov district near Moscow, noted that none of his peasant patients had cancer. The doctor, wondering about this, "started looking around... and discovered this: That to save money on tea the muzhiks of that locality brewed not tea, but chaga, otherwise known as the birch-tree mushroom. ... Actually, it's not even a birch-tree mushroom, but a birch-tree cancer ... a sort of ugly growth on old birch trees... It is dome-shaped, black on the outside and dark brown inside." It occurred to doctor Maslennikov, Solzhenitsyn continues, that this tea made from the birch tree mushroom could be the magic remedy that the Russian peasants, without realizing it, had been using to cure themselves of cancer for hundreds of years. Solzhenitsyn’s novel is largely autobiographical. He was a patient himself in a Cancer ward, and he went on to recover from what he was told was a terminal illness. Did Solzhenitsyn use chaga to treat his cancer? It certainly seems likely.
The hard-core mycological types among you may be interested to know that Inonotus obliquus it is a white rot fungus in the family hymenochaetaceae. It is monomitic, having only generative hyphae and with no clamp connections. If you want to know what all that means, there is no better resource than Tom Volk’s Polypore Primer, which you can visit at: http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/polypore.html
But wait! We have not come to the end of the Chaga story. Another common name for Inonotus obliquus is “the true tinder polypore”. While researching chaga on the internet, I found that chaga is well known in the “primitive skills community’. They are folks who enjoy the challenge of starting fires without matches, using methods employed by humans millennia before modern times. One method is the striking together of flint and steel or iron pyrite to generate a spark, which then falls upon on and ignite a tinder. Masters of this method swear by chaga and have found it to be the best of all tinders. The dried inner portion of the chaga is the part used. Another polypore, Fomes fomentarius, has the common name of “tinder polypore”, and this was the species I was familiar with for use as a tinder. F. fomentarius, however, is a much harder fungus and requires considerable preparation before use. Chaga is superior because it requires no preparation and, and it “takes a spark” better. Primitive skills folks have found a method that further enhances the virtues of chaga as a tinder…”repeated applications of urine (letting it dry in between) makes it much better at taking a spark”.
Ron Spinosa
The Great Cross Country Ski/Winter Chaga Foray
For the first time in its history the MMS sponsored an event that joined together two fine outdoor activities, the sport of cross country skiing with foraying for mushrooms, in this case the famous medicinal mushroom Innonotus obliquus (“chaga”). The site foray leader Lee Moellerman chose for this adventure was Savanna Portage State Park located in north central Minnesota about 170 miles directly north of the Twin Cities.
On this Saturday, March 5, 2005, neither the weather nor the snow conditions could have been better. There was a good two feet of clean, bright white snow on the ground and the temperature was a balmy 32 degrees. The directions to the foray site given in the newsletter were slightly off, but not enough to cause more than a few minutes delay in reaching it. As it turned out there were only three of us, Lee Moellerman, Ron Spinosa and yours truly, Bob Fulgency, that made the visit to Savanna. The small attendance was probably the result of the fact that the newsletter containing the announcement of the chaga foray came out only a few days before the event.
Ron drove to Duluth and spent the night there the evening before the foray. Lee came early Saturday morning to check out the area prior to Ron’s and my arrival. As we prepared to start on the ski trail under the watchful eyes of two high flying bald eagles, Ron discovered that he had not brought his ski poles so a pair was quickly created out of a couple of properly sized tree limbs found near the parking area.
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Ron (with stick poles) and Lee on the Chaga Trail
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Although his equipment was a bit novel, Ron adapted to his substitute poles quickly and they served him well and did not slow him down. Luckily for Ron there were no fastidious skiing aficionados around to issue him a fashion citation. About fifty yards down the trail Lee had earlier spotted a fairly good sized chaga on a birch tree; unfortunately it was about twelve feet off the ground making it beyond our reach. The early discovery of this chaga was encouraging so we continued on our way with high spirits and expectations. After about an hour without spotting any more chaga bearing trees we were beginning to believe that maybe there is in fact only one chaga for every 10,000 trees as one authority on the subject has claimed. At that point we decided to get off the trail and onto the frozen surface of nearby Lake Savanna. About this time the sun came out and the nice day we were enjoying suddenly became perfect. From the lake we had a good view of the birch trees along the shore and after a few minutes of using this technique for locating promising trees we discovered a couple of them bearing chaga.
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Lee and Ron Harvesting a Chaga |
The first tree we visited had a fair sized chaga on it which we proceeded to cut off carefully so as not to harm the tree. The chaga that we could see on the second tree was smaller, but when we examined that tree more closely we found a large chaga on the back of it. All told we probably had over 25 pounds of chaga to place into our back packs.
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Bob and Ron Collecting a Chaga |
We continued around the lake and saw several more birch bearing chaga, but the mushrooms were too high up on the trees to get down without climbing a ladder. After another hour we decided to call it a day as we had accomplished our main goal and besides our chaga was starting to become more of a burden than we cared to continue to lug around.
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Bob, Ron and Chagas at Trail’s End |
We had a terrific time looking for and finding the chaga and now considered the daunting prospect of pulverizing the chaga into the consistency of ground coffee beans. Once that is accomplished the chaga can be percolated just like coffee and the health enhancing chaga tea will be ready for drinking. In closing I encourage you too to make it a point to participate in the chaga foray being planned for next winter as it is a wonderful way to get out and enjoy the winter splendor of northern Minnesota.
Bob Fulgency
For more information or to submit articles for the MMS Toadstool Review, please contact the Newsletter Editor - newsletters@minnesotamushrooms.org