Medicinal Herbs

Wild Lingzhi Extract

Ganoderma lucidum

Wild lingzhi (Ganoderma lucidum) is not a plant but a woody, lignified fungus. Its kidney-shaped, round or fan-shaped cap is ringed with concentric bands and lacquered to a varnished shine, brown through yellow-red to orange-red, and sits on a stalk, long or short, joined off to one side; underneath, an ivory-white surface of fine pores darkens to yellow-brown with age. In Vietnam it is called nấm lim, after the lim trees on whose wood it grows. It grows wild in cold, high mountains in Chinese provinces such as Sichuan, Guangdong and Guangxi, and is now raised commercially there, in Japan and in Vietnam.