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Background
How to judge a whole lingzhi fruiting body
A good lingzhi fruiting body is round or kidney-shaped, with a short stem and thick flesh; the underside of the cap (the side with pores) is best pale yellow or golden, with white second best. If it is grayish-white, with large pores, very light in weight and crumbles when broken, the spores have already been released and the quality is poorest. With sliced or powdered lingzhi, quality is hard to judge by eye.
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 section “How to tell good lingzhi from bad”.
What the researchers say
Fruiting bodies are usually graded by cap diameter: grade 1 is over 15 cm, grade 2 is 10 to 15 cm and grade 3 is under 10 cm, and all should be more than 1 cm thick. Standards vary slightly by region.
Source
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. 15
Checked against the book Last updated: 2026-10-06