Description
Inonotus obliquus
Our chaga (Inonotus obliquus) is harvested in October 2020 in the Karelia region in Russia. Our friend whose family lives there for generations collects the chaga herself. The Karelia region is well known for its’ abundant forests. We only sell the whole fungus to ensure that you have the real deal.
Inonotus obliquus, commonly known as chaga mushroom (a Latinisation of the Russian term ‘чага’), is a fungus in the family Hymenochaetaceae. It is parasitic on birch (Betula spp.) and other trees. The sterile conk is irregularly formed and has the appearance of burnt charcoal. It is not the fruiting body of the fungus, but a sclerotia or mass of mycelium, mostly black because of the presence of massive amounts of melanin. The fertile fruiting body can be found very rarely as a resupinate (crustose) fungus on or near the clinker, usually appearing after the host tree is dead.
Inonotus obliquus grows in birch forests of Russia, Korea, Eastern and Northern Europe, northern areas of the United States, Alaska, in the North Carolina mountains and in Canada.
In traditional Eastern European and Russian sacred use, the conk is boiled for several hours to make a tea. This has a long history of sacred use in that part of the world, and modern science has confirmed many of the traditional uses for this fungus.
Harvesting
Our chaga is only collected from living birches.
Additional Information:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4946216/