CHAGA

Inonotus obliquus

 

CLASSIFICATION—

Fungus

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Black sterile conk growing upon living birch

Outer surface dark and deeply cracked

Interior hard, cork-like, and rust colored

Found only upon wounded trees

 

SEASON—

Harvested year-round

Often gathered autumn through winter

Broken fresh and dried slowly

 

ARCHIVE—

 

Russian folk medicine

Recorded in household use by the sixteenth century.

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — Cancer Ward, 1968

"The peasants... instead of tea, drank an infusion of the birch fungus called chaga."

 

Khanty tradition

Prepared as tea and used in cleansing throughout western Siberia.

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CORRESPONDENCES—

Birch

Winter

Smoke

Endurance

 

NAMES—

Chaga

Clinker Polypore

Cinder Conk

Black Mass