Reishi
The bracket that looks varnished. Here because you ask, not because we sell it.
Reishi, Ganoderma lucidum, is a woody bracket fungus that grows in shelves off hardwood stumps and looks like it has been varnished. It is called lingzhi in China and reishi in Japan. People ask us about it. It is not in our coffee and this page is reference only.
What is reishi?
A bracket, or shelf fungus, which means it grows sideways out of wood rather than up out of the ground. Kidney-shaped, red-brown fading to cream at the growing edge, and hard. Not hard like a raw potato, hard like a piece of furniture. You cannot cut one with a kitchen knife.
The surface is the thing people remember. It has a natural gloss so even and so deep that the first reaction is usually that somebody painted it. Nobody did. That is just how the crust forms.
Where does reishi come from?
East Asia, on dead and dying hardwood, particularly on old stumps. Lingzhi in China, reishi in Japan, and its shape turns up as a decorative motif in Chinese carving and painting far more often than a fungus normally manages.
It has been cultivated for a long time, on hardwood logs and on sawdust blocks, which is why the reishi in a jar today is generally farmed rather than found. Wild ones still turn up on old stumps and they are a genuinely good afternoon when they do.
What have researchers looked at?
We have not done the same depth of reading on reishi that we have done on lion's mane and chaga, and we are not going to write this section as though we have.
There is a large human research literature with reishi's name on it. We have not read it end to end against the primary papers, so we are not going to summarise it here. When we do the reading, this page gets rewritten and dated. Until then, read what is above as biology and history.
What is actually in reishi?
Its cell wall, like every fungal cell wall, is built from beta-(1,3),(1,6)-D-glucans. Reishi also has named families of triterpenes that get quoted constantly, and we have not checked those against primary sources ourselves, so they are not printed here yet.
Why is this page here?
Because people ask, and reishi is probably the single most asked-about mushroom in this category. It is not in our coffee, it has never been in a Fruiting Body product, and nothing on this page is a reason to buy anything.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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