Paul Stamets

“My family is delighted every time I cook maitake. Our taste buds awaken in anticipation of its rich, deep and nuanced flavors.”

“Known colloquially as 'winter,' 'golden needle,' and 'velvet foot' mushrooms, enoki mushrooms grow across much of the world, inhabiting dead conifer trees and stumps, and generally appearing...”

“Mushrooms provide a vast array of potential medicinal compounds. Many mushrooms - such as portobello, oyster, reishi and maitake - are well-known for these properties, but the lion's mane mu...”

“Chaga is significant in ethnomycology, forest ecology, and increasingly in pharmacognosy. Its long-term human use and cultural eastern European and Russian acceptance should awaken serious r...”

“From dead plant matter to nematodes to bacteria, never underestimate the cleverness of mushrooms to find new food!”

“Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, oil spills and radioactive fallout cause massive death of people, pigs, bats and birds. These disasters also impact the immune hea...”

“Mushrooms have many helpful nutrients, including beta glucans for immune enhancement, ergothioneines for antioxidative potentiation, nerve growth stimulators for helping brain function, and...”

“Chaga is one of the weirdest mushrooms you may ever see. A fungal parasite found on birch trees, Chaga is a hardened, blackened, crusty formation that looks like a bursting tumor.”

“Traditionally, our ancestors boiled mushrooms in water to make a soothing tea. Boiling served several purposes: killing contaminants, softening the flesh, and extracting the rich soluble pol...”

“In the wild, an enoki mushroom is often squat-looking and its stem is rarely more than twice as long as the cap is wide. When they are grown by farmers and hobbyists, however, their stems el...”

“Lion's mane may be our first 'smart' mushroom. It is a safe, edible fungus that appears to confer cognitive benefits on our aging population.”

“My team and I have discovered, over decades of study, that mushroom mycelium is a rich resource of new antimicrobial compounds, which work in concert, helping protecting the mushrooms - and...”

“Life exists throughout the cosmos and is a consequence of matter in the universe.”

“Nature is a numbers game. We need all the support we can get as our immune systems and health are under assault from pollution, stress, contaminated food and age-related diseases as our life...”

“Chaga mycelium is relatively easy to grow by using methods already practiced elsewhere in the mushroom industry. Its mycelium is initially an off-whitish color, deepening with age.”

“Nitric oxide production by immune cells is one of the key mechanisms that our bodies use to destroy diseased cells. Enhancement of these types of immune responses is seen consistently with m...”

“Turkey tail mushrooms have been used to treat various maladies for hundreds of years in Asia, Europe, and by indigenous peoples in North America. Records of turkey tail brewed as medicinal t...”

“Mycologists are few and far between. We are under-funded, poorly represented in the context of other sciences - ironic, as the very foundation of our ecosystems are directly dependent upon f...”

“Through trial-and-error and observable outcomes, our ancestors narrowed the field of edible mushroom candidates to just a few with remarkable, health-supporting properties.”

“Although the trends are promising and reishi mushrooms exhibit a number of interesting medicinal properties, modern scientific techniques have yet to affirm its traditional 'panacea polypore...”