Popularly known as the orange shelf mushroom, the stick ear mushroom, or in Zapotec mey-yag, or in Mayan kuxum; the Trametes sanguinea mushroom has been used since ancient times by indigenous peoples from the Brazilian Amazon to the Tzotzil peoples of Chiapas.
The indigenous peoples of the Amazon use it to control bleeding and relieve teething pain in small children. They make a mild tea and spread it on their gums.
Young girls from the Tzotzil community in the highlands of Chiapas obtain a soft orange blush by rubbing their fingers over the pores of the mushroom, which they use to apply makeup on special occasions.
This fungus contains pigments that can be used to dye wool and cotton. It must be boiled as a color bath, as is done with cempasuchil, and then the fibers must be added and left to boil for an hour.
Here's a short workshop on how to dye with this beautiful tropical mushroom that I taught through the Central Texas Mycological Society using the Japanese technique of Shibori: I want to see it!
Some photographs of its extraction for wool dyeing:
