Reishiki
“Hi Sessile!”
Something happens to you when you grow Reishi mushrooms. When you sleep, they pop into your dreams. When you’re awake, you start seeing their signature kidneyesque curves in the periphery of your vision. These organisms are so strange, so beautiful, so expressive. That’s more than enough. But they go on. They’re a living canvas. The mycelium can be molded and dried to produce lightweight, insulative, flame-resistant objects of any shape. They contain compounds: beta-glucans, triterpenes, ergosterols, enzymes that have profound effects on human health. And in the forest, they restart the food chain, turning wood into mites, beetles, moths and soil. We are absolutely in love with Reishi.
The species we grow is Ganoderm sessile. The original specimen was revealed to the great Olga Tzagos of Smugtown Mushrooms in Rochester, NY, USA. She cloned the mushroom and has shared it with us, for which we are eternally grateful.
Reishiki was coined by my son Avior when he was 1 on 2 years old. I showed him a reishi conk. “Avi, this is Reishi.” The next day I showed him the mushroom again and he lit up as he conjured the word “Reishiki!”
I liked the ring of this new word so much I knew Reishiki had to be something. With this blog post, we welcome Reishiki into the world. What is Reishiki? Hmmm.
Well, there’s a gallery. Photos of reishi growing, reishi bouqets, stop motion antlers ripe for the gif-ing. cheesy attempts at flying space mushrooms, and a lot of poorly lit greenscreens. Email regenseed at the email everyone uses dot com if you’d like access to the gallery. You are free to use the images any way you’d like. And once the Cardano NFT ecosystem is enriched with lots of community-built functionality we’d love you to mint your tokens there.
Ok, so we’ve established that Reishi’s cool. NFTs are fun. Fungal NFTs are extra fun. But is there a bigger point? Maybe! What that might be? How about getting more Reishi into the world. We believe that we can use more beauty, more art, more medicine, more bugs, more soil, all things we get more of the more there’s reishi around. We want to push reishi to the edges. To indigenous folks, sick folks, healers. To the artists and designers and landscapers and thinkers whom the world needs to inspire to greatness.
Link to Olga Cardano Conk NFT
Link to Cardano Conks Fungallery
Link to Open Source Reishiki image gallery
behind the scenes w Sessile