🍄 Medicinal mushrooms
Fungi are not plants but a kingdom of their own. Here we collect medicinal and tonic mushrooms — sourced, with constituents and safety notes, in the same style as the plant database.
Use
Season
Banded mottlegill
(Panaeolus cinctulus)
A worldwide psilocybin-containing dung and lawn fungus – inconspicuous and easily confused with deadly toxic mushrooms.
Chaga
(Inonotus obliquus)
A black, birch-dwelling fungal conk used for centuries as a tea in Siberian folk medicine.
Death cap
(Amanita phalloides)
The world's most lethal mushroom — a single fruiting body can kill an adult.
Ergot
(Claviceps purpurea)
A parasitic fungus that grows mainly on rye, produces highly active alkaloids, and is historically tied both to severe poisonings (St. Anthony's fire) and to important medicines.
False morel
(Gyromitra esculenta)
A brain-shaped spring mushroom that is deadly poisonous raw – its toxin turns into rocket fuel inside the body.
Fly agaric
(Amanita muscaria)
The iconic red-and-white poisonous mushroom of northern forests, famous from fairy tales and notorious from Siberian shamanism.
Golden Teacher
(Psilocybe cubensis)
The pantropical, dung-dwelling Psilocybe cubensis contains the psychoactive alkaloids psilocybin and psilocin and is a controlled substance in many countries.
Liberty cap
(Psilocybe semilanceata)
A small, globally distributed grassland mushroom and type species of the genus Psilocybe — psychoactive, controlled, and easily confused with deadly look-alikes.
Lion's Mane
(Hericium erinaceus)
A striking white spined mushroom with a lion's-mane fringe, prized as an edible and studied for its nerve-active compounds.
Oyster mushroom
(Pleurotus ostreatus)
A popular edible mushroom whose beta-glucans and natural lovastatin have also drawn the attention of cholesterol research.
Panther cap
(Amanita pantherina)
Brown amanita with white flecks, more toxic than the fly agaric and a dangerous double of edible species.
Porcini
(Boletus edulis)
The king of edible mushrooms – firm, nutty, and prized both fresh and dried.
Reishi / Lingzhi
(Ganoderma lingzhi)
The varnished reddish-brown 'mushroom of immortality' of Chinese medicine, traditionally taken as a tea or extract to support vitality.
Scarlet caterpillarclub
(Cordyceps militaris)
An orange-red ascomycete fungus used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and marketed as an adaptogen, though many proposed effects remain limited to lab and animal studies.
Shiitake
(Lentinula edodes)
A popular East Asian culinary mushroom traditionally valued as an immune-supporting tonic.
Turkey Tail
(Trametes versicolor)
The shimmering deadwood polypore whose polysaccharides PSK and PSP are used in TCM and as an adjuvant in cancer therapy.