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The Corroboree
ShamanRus

Medicinal Cultivation Laws

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Does anyone know of a good place to find out what medicinal fungi are legally allowed to be cultivated in Australia. I was recently in touch with Aussi Mushroom Supplies were he mentioned that lions mane is not allowed to be grown and sold in Australia, I assume this goes for other more exotic species like reishi for example ... I always wondered why you only see cultivators growing Oysters/Shiitakes.

Any help would be great!!

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Can't help with legalities but turkey tail grows naturally here in WA. Should be able to get you a wild sample this winter if that's any good to ya.

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As far as i know, apart from the known hallucinogenic species there are no restrictions on growing any fungi. There are restrictions on importation of spores and cultures, and for good biosecurity reasons.

legally i think the only restricted species are Psilocybin containing species, and for Amanita muscaria (on a state by state basis).

Otherwise there are no restrictions on cultivation. i would love to have references regarding said restrictions on lions mane. in terms of then selling your produce im not sure what legalities exist.

oysters and shiitake - from an economic standpoint, given the effort and costs involved, they are known sellers, really easy to grow and esp with oysters a good return on your investment. and at the end of the day thats what you want, return on investment. reishi would still be considered a niche market, and anything else is at the moment just novelty and you probably wont get any return.

but there are plenty of farmers markets popping up so now is a good time to experiment and help educate people.

i think you will find that species like reishi and turkey tail are extremely cosmopolitan. they exist naturally in australia, and we have our own lions mane species as well. and really if you want to cultivate try to keep as endemic as possible, because of said biosecurity risks.

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Yeh i've got Turkey tail and reishi cultivating atm but I will be collecting some wild species this coming Winter, be nice to organize a foray in Perth for mycophiles interested!

Ahh okay the cultivator I was in contact with said he had health and safety people check up on his cultures and actully took some away including some Lions mane that he had however I couldn't find any restrictions using the Western Australian Organisms Search.

I think that the medicinal rather than culinary things will be forthcoming, recently I even seen on GWN a show about reshi tea and with all the superfood fads around im sure it will have its time to shine!

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I can picture the youtube videos now!

"10 types of mushrooms THEY don't want you to know about!"

Good luck, pretty sure i've seen lions mane for sale by a known shop... but don't quote me on that.

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I have only tasted the mane once and it was grown by an amateur that was selling then via a food market ;) the world is your oyster mr shaman, don't let the world guide you, guide the world!

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shaman rumba -
mane tango
.. oyster salsa

cha cha cha !

Edited by mysubtleascention
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I asked AQIS about importing some cultures once. From what I remember I would have had to had them labelled and inspected which would've cost me money. I then thought it'd be easier and cheaper to find someone local who had cultures.

I was able to buy a blue oyster culture from a local source which I fruited and cultured on agar. Another thing I did was buy a mushroom grow box from Bunnings and when it fruited I took tissue samples from the mushrooms and put them on agar. If you come across mushroom grow kits then it's a good way to grow a bunch of mushrooms from which you can take spore prints and tissue samples.

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If they arent on the aqis list you cant import them but i dont think non list species are illegal to sell or posess. As an example 'white chestnut mushrooms' and maitake are not on the list but people grow and sell them at markets

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Here is a link to a list of allowable and restricted mushroom species culture imports into Australia. Very annoying as Maitake and Lions Mane seems to be restricted :(

 

https://bicon.agriculture.gov.au/BiconWeb4.0/ViewElement/Element/Index?elementPk=653575&caseElementPk=719742

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