Medicinal fungi used in traditional medicine systems — distinct from herbs and spices but sharing the same evidence-based approach.
Fungi
Lion's Mane
Hericium erinaceus
Hericium erinaceus has no cap, no gills, and no stem in any recognisable sense. What it has is a globe of cascading white spines, 5–40 cm across, growing directly from the side of a tree. First-time observers frequently cannot identify it as a fungus. It resembles a large white wig, or a sea anemone that has had a particularly ambitious morning. It is also — unlike most of the medicinal fungi category — something you would actually want to eat.
Reishi
Ganoderma lucidum / G. lingzhi
Reishi is not a plant. Fungi are more closely related to animals than to trees, which means the mushroom that Chinese emperors used as their symbol of divine immortality is biologically closer to you than it is to the oak tree it grows on. This has not been widely advertised as a selling point. Meet the fungus Ganoderma grows as a bracket from dead or dying hardwood — it does not grow in soil. No gills; the underside is white to cream pores. The cap is fan-shaped to kidney-shaped, up to 30 cm across, with a surface that looks lacquered: shiny, varnished, in concentric rings of reddish-brown fading to orange and cream at the margin. Hard, woody, cork-like. It is not a culinary mushroom — not because it’s toxic, but because it tastes extremely bitter and has the texture of something you would use to sand furniture.