Lingzhi mushroom | |
---|---|
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Fungi |
Division: | Basidiomycota |
Class: | Agaricomycetes |
Order: | Polyporales |
Family: | Ganodermataceae |
Genus: | Ganoderma |
Species: | G. lucidum |
Binomial name | |
Ganoderma lucidum (Curtis) P. Karst (1881) |
Lingzhi mushroom | |
---|---|
Mycological characteristics | |
pores on hymenium | |
cap is offset or indistinct |
|
hymenium attachment is irregular or not applicable | |
stipe is bare or lacks a stipe |
|
spore print is brown | |
ecology is saprotrophic or parasitic |
|
edibility: edible |
Lingzhi mushroom | |||||||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Traditional Chinese | 靈芝 | ||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 灵芝 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | supernatural mushroom | ||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
Korean name | |||||||||||||
Hangul | 영지 | ||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
Japanese name | |||||||||||||
Kana | レイシ | ||||||||||||
Kyūjitai | 靈芝 | ||||||||||||
Shinjitai | 霊芝 | ||||||||||||
|
Transcriptions | |
---|---|
Standard Mandarin | |
Hanyu Pinyin | língzhī |
Wade–Giles | ling chih |
Yue: Cantonese | |
Jyutping | ling4 zi1 |
Transcriptions | |
---|---|
Revised Romanization | yeongji |
Transcriptions | |
---|---|
Traditional Hepburn | reishi |
The lingzhi mushroom or reishi mushroom (traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: língzhī; Japanese: 霊芝; rōmaji: reishi; Vietnamese: linh chi; literally: "soul/spirit mushroom") is a species complex that encompasses several fungal species of the genus Ganoderma, most commonly the closely related species Ganoderma lucidum, Ganoderma tsugae, and Ganoderma lingzhi. G. lingzhi enjoys special veneration in East Asia, where it has been used as a medicinal mushroom in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 2,000 years, making it one of the oldest mushrooms known to have been used medicinally.
cap is offset
stipe is bare
ecology is saprotrophic
Names for the lingzhi fungus have a two thousand-year history. The Chinese term lingzhi 靈芝 was first recorded during the Han dynasty (206 BC – 9 AD). Petter Adolf Karsten named the genus Ganoderma in 1881.
The fungus was given its first binomial name, Boletus lucidus, by English botanist William Curtis in 1781. The lingzhi's botanical names have Greek and Latin roots. The generic name Ganoderma derives from the Greek ganos γανος "brightness; sheen", hence "shining" and derma δερμα "skin". The specific epithet lucidum is Latin for "shining". Tsugae is derived from the Japanese word for "hemlock" (tsuga ).