2017 Telluride Mushroom Festival

In East Asia the healing power of Cordyceps is in highest esteem, making Yartsa gunbu (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) the world’s most precious fungus at over $30,000 per pound, and accounting for 40% of rural income in Tibet. Every year in spring, Tibetans move to the grasslands to collect this tiny, elusive fungus that grows on the larva of ghost moths. Consequently, sustainability is of great concern, but new research helps explaining its apparent resilience of this inter-kingdom jumper. Meanwhile much of Western main stream medicine is not even aware of Cordyceps. Likewise, there are hundreds of different Cordyceps species in the Americas and only in recent years they are receiving deserved attention. The neo-tropics are amazingly rich in bizarre Cordyceps species and Daniel, based on a dozen Mushroaming trips to South America, will introduce the most common and also some rare species, including some Cordyceps, not known to science yet,