We visit a former organic farm on the outskirts of Bristol, which has morphed into Bristol Fungarium, a fungi powerhouse that’s been transforming peoples’ lives for the better thanks to its special tinctures cultivated from mushrooms, of which many owe their source to the fruits of local foraging adventures
We’re so used to seeing packets of mushrooms lined up on supermarket shelves, covered in cellophane and jostling like soft pale pebbles in plastic containers, sliced onto pizzas and stir fried into ribbons of juicy noodles that their superhero status can easily slip from our minds. Yet they are often likened to an alien presence on Earth, with mycelium root-like structures that create unfathomable networks throughout the natural world and unusual fruiting bodies existing beyond the bounds of plant or animal. Some fungus-like life forms have been found in rocks dating back 2.4 billion years; plants, on the other hand, first colonised earth around 500 million years ago by comparison.
Once you unearth the secrets fungi hold – especially regarding the huge range of physical and psychological benefits to humans the enigmatic compounds they contain can bring – a door opens to another universe entirely. That’s exactly what happened for Tom Baxter, the founder of Bristol Fungarium, when he attended a mushroom cultivation course in 2018. This wasn’t his first foray into fungi, having tried (largely unsuccessfully) to forage for them on trips that took him from the foothills of the Pyrenees to the steppes of Siberia.
But, as it turned out, he’d have much more fruitful forages right here at home on the outskirts of Bristol. In 2020, Tom transformed his existing initiative The Growing Up Project (which welcomed children from 9 months to 19 years into his organic farm just outside Bristol, encouraging them to reconnect with nature and learn what it means to work with the land) into Bristol Fungarium, producing the UK’s first organic-certified medicinal mushrooms.
Bristol Fungarium focuses on the finest quality, organic-certified UK-bred native and exotic mushrooms; handling the whole process from spores to sterile lab work, liquid mycelium cultivation and finally the fruiting blocks – turning them into tinctures that can be taken orally to support all kinds of functions and processes within the body.
Tom’s team now crops over a ton of 18 strains of fungi each month, including maitake, shiitake and king oyster, as well as seven other strains of oyster mushroom, wine caps, lion’s mane, reishi, turkey tail and cordyceps.
Force of nature
Walking around Bristol Fungarium itself, which is tucked into the countryside between the city and Bristol Airport (and isn’t open to the public), the dedication needed to grow, cultivate and then extract from these incredible mushrooms is immediately palpable.
The amount of highly skilled scientific knowledge, theory, experimentation, and practical application – and necessity to do endless washing up, which no one seems to be able to escape no matter what industry you work in – is obviously such a commitment from the whole team that includes an in-house nutritionist and chief forager (over a third of the mushroom strains grown at Bristol Fungarium have been cloned from local specimens, including reishi from Barrow Gurney and a local strain of lion’s mane found within 500m of the farm), laboratory manager, grower, and head of extraction among others.
When asked if his team is the only one in the UK undertaking this complex process with functional fungi, from foraging, to cloning, cultivating and growing, then extracting the compounds and creating tinctures, Tom laughs and says yes… and that there’s a reason no one else is doing it (see above!).
Wandering past shelves of fluffy lion’s mane, amber-like ears of reishi, outstretched fingers of cordyceps and many, many others, we were also able to glimpse the intricate cloning processes taking place in the laboratories. It’s worth noting here that Henry Jephson leads the research and development of Bristol Fungarium’s commercial strains, managing its ever-growing specimen library and overseeing the continual process optimisation from agar – where the fungi cells are cloned and grown – to the fruiting bodies that then go into each tincture.
Top spores
To say that Tom and his team’s work is fuelled by science is a huge understatement. Though mushrooms have been used functionally and medicinally in countries including Japan and China for millennia, fungi are not currently recognised as having medicinal value in UK legislation. This can lead to a lot of grey areas for producers, from marketing messages to beneficial claims, which is why Tom wants to be so thorough and exacting when it comes to testing for different compounds – and their quantities in each strain.
He explains that this includes analytical chemistry testing work in laboratories, both in university settings and beyond. If the DNA profile of particular strains being cultivated on site contains codes for (and spikes in levels of) specific compounds shown in studies to be useful for supporting cancer treatment, for example, or for positively impacting inflammatory responses from the nervous system, then those strains can be extracted and cross-bred with other mushrooms creating hybrids for tinctures that could potentially provide even more benefits.
The unique characteristics of the compounds in these mushrooms appear to have the ability to regulate certain systems in the human body. Tom notes that traditionally, when you take medicine, it’s often to block something, and not to regulate, whereas mushrooms are ‘adaptogenic’, rather than being ‘boosters’ or ‘fighters’.
If you’re curious as to how the tinctures are created, once harvested the mushrooms are then dried in an infrared dehydrator at exactly 34°C to maximise the quantity of bioactive compounds. The team then extracts the powdered mushrooms into a very large volume of water (twice, once at 68°C, then again under pressure at 121°C); 95% of this water gets evaporated off to concentrate the extract. The mushrooms are then extracted into 96% organic ethanol, which is combined with the water to create the final product. Thousands of these bottles are filled each month, which are then sold online, at markets, Christmas fairs and especially at festivals throughout the summer months as people look increasingly to natural ways to improve their wellbeing and support their health.
Functional fungi
So why are more and more people in the UK turning to natural supplements, like mushrooms, for psychical and psychological support?
Tom believes a major influence has been how long it takes for most people to access NHS services, which has resulted in many taking their health into their own hands and seeking support elsewhere.
He also recognises that post-lockdown, people have been spending more time outdoors re-engaging with nature, and seeing the value in it. With many communities around the country not now following structural belief systems, Tom notes that people may be using mushrooms to plug the need for reverence, opting to feel rooted to something taken from the Earth around them, which can also have a positive impact on their outlook and wellbeing.
This modern boom, however, brings with it a lot of baggage, and Tom warns that there are other products on the market that claim to contain functional fungi, but due to testing rules (requiring testing the presence of heavy metals only), may not have any of the specific active ingredients inside at all, especially if the raw components have been brought in and not cultivated by the companies. He also flags that though there’s been more demand for functional mushrooms of late, it’s certainly nothing new in this country. During the plague, he says, ‘London tonic no. 1’ had 30% ganoderma (reishi) in it, with the tonic designed to help combat the deadly disease.
Talking to someone who’s now dedicated to exploring the alien-like existence of mushrooms and wonders they contain, we were keen to know which type is Tom’s favourite. It’s maitake (also known as hen-of-the-woods). Why? Because it’s the hardest to grow, of course. He clearly likes a challenge, but he says it’s also the best edible, as well as being interesting from an insulin perspective, and is great for people who menstruate to take during their luteal phase. He notes that maitake is not Bristol Fungarium’s highest seller – which the growing team must be pleased about – as this spot is taken by lion’s mane (making about 50% of sales), which many people buy to support their mental health.
Working as harmoniously as possible with nature, and prioritising a methodical, science-led approach means that Bristol Fungarium can stay true to its principles. But there are exciting things in the pipeline, too, including a research foraging trip to Barbados; more activity with Fortnum & Mason (Tom’s previously been part of a panel led by Kew Gardens at Fortnum & Mason’s Food & Drink Studio in London looking at fungi and wellbeing); joining forces with vets to be able to prescribe the tinctures to animals under a special licence; and working to create a UK native mushroom grow bag kit (to help combat the easily available, non-native grow kits that are selectively bred for high yields and fast growth, and can often lead to spores spreading in countries where they wouldn’t be naturally occurring).
Tom and his team may be at the forefront of functional fungi exploration, but they’re also keeping their mycelial roots firmly planted in the local flora and fauna, putting the needs of nature first.
To find out more info about Bristol Fungarium, see its products and contact the team if you have any questions, visit bristolfungarium.com
