Medicinal Herbs

Reishi Extract

Ganoderma lucidum

Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) is not a plant but a woody fungus, its cap round to fan-shaped and set off-centre on a long or short stalk. In the red kind the colour runs from brown through yellow-red to orange, the upper surface glossy as though varnished and marked with concentric rings, the pore surface beneath ivory-white, ageing to yellow-brown. It grows wild in the cold high mountains of Sichuan, Guangdong and Guangxi in China, where it is now also farmed on an industrial scale; growing it has more recently begun in Vietnam. The fruiting body is dried whole, then ground to powder or made up into liquid preparations.