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Background
How fruiting body, spore powder, spore oil and mycelium differ
The fruiting body is the official medicinal material listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, and most of the material in modern studies confirming lingzhi’s effects is also fruiting body. Spores have a hard outer wall; whether the wall-breaking process is thorough, and whether oxidation of the oils is prevented after breaking, both affect product quality. Genuine and fake spore oil are hard to tell apart by appearance. Fermented mycelium products are often mixed with the growing medium and hard to separate from it.
Book on lingzhiSummarized from a published book; verifiable by title and ISBNPublished book · see title and ISBN in the sourceHow the study was done
Drawn from the chapters on lingzhi raw materials and products.
What the researchers say
When choosing a lingzhi product, first make sure the raw material is genuine lingzhi and find out which part is used.
Source
Wu Tingyao, reviewed by Hsu Rey-Shyang, 灵芝，妙不可言 [Lingzhi: Wonderful Beyond Words], People’s Medical Publishing House, 2017, ISBN 978-7-117-24242-4, Ch. 2; Lin Zhibin (ed.), 灵芝从神奇到科学 [Lingzhi: From Mystery to Science], 3rd ed., Peking University Medical Press, 2018, ISBN 978-7-5659-1844-5, Ch. 3 and 15
The two books agree Last updated: 2026-10-06