Not worth eating
Turkey tail
Trametes versicolor
The character that does the work
Fine WHITE PORES on the underside. The many look-alikes have a smooth underside, a maze-like one, or a rusty one.
The specimen sheet, in examination order
01Cap
2 to 8 cm, thin flexible fan in concentric zones of brown, grey, blue, ochre and cream, velvety to the touch.
02Underside
Fine white pores, visible with a lens: three to five per millimetre. This is the identification.
03Stem, and the base
None.
04Flesh, cut
Thin, tough, leathery.
05Spore print
White to cream
How to take one06Where it grows
In tiers on dead hardwood everywhere. One of the commonest fungi in the world.
When to look
Typically Jan to Dec in the northern hemisphere. Fruiting swings by weeks with rainfall and by a month or more with latitude, so this is when to look rather than when it will be there.
Worldwide.
What is worth knowing about it
The best-evidenced of the medicinal fungi, and even then the evidence is narrower than the marketing implies: polysaccharide-K derived from this species is an approved adjunct to cancer therapy in Japan, which is not the same claim as a supermarket capsule improving a healthy person's immunity.
Confused with
- False turkey tail
- Violet toothed polypore
In the kitchen
Not a food. Simmered as a tea or extracted.
The techniques, and why they workSold as a supplement
The strongest evidence base of any mushroom here, and the widest gap between what the evidence supports and what is sold. A regulated drug used alongside chemotherapy in Japanese hospitals is a completely different product from a supermarket capsule, and the marketing relies on you not noticing.
The claims, graded by what the evidence actually isThis page tells you what to check. It does not tell you the mushroom in your hand is that species, and it cannot. If you are not certain, do not eat it. If you have already eaten something and feel unwell, contact a poison centre and keep an uncooked specimen.
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