What Is Reishi? — Herbalism 101

My favorite part about being an herbalist is geeking out over the relationship between humans and living things — like plants and fungus – that give us life.

This is probably a good time to establish that there is a difference between plants and fungus. There are so many differences, in fact, that they make up two distinct kingdoms: Plantae and Fungi.

Mushrooms, molds, and yeast comprise kingdom Funghi. Humans have relied on mushrooms for millennia as remedies to a wide range of illness and activity. The oldest European human mummy Otzi, who lived nearly 5,000 years ago, is thought to have strung two types of mushrooms around his neck: one as a remedy to intestinal parasites and the other as a means to carry fire from one location to another. The first type of mushroom is what's called a polypore: mushrooms without gills that release spores through small pores or tubes. They grow annually on stumps and trunks of trees.

Reishi mushroom — which I'm seeing a lot of these days in cool (but in my opinion, packaging-excessive) elixirs — is one polypore that is getting a lot of hype. But what are they? Where do they live? And what do they do in our bodies?

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