False lingzhi unmasked: Scientists crack the 245-year mystery behind a medicinal mushroom mix-up

In a new study published today in Plants, People, Planet, scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and their international collaborators clarify the distinction between Ganoderma lucidum, a European bracket fungus described in 1781, and Ganoderma lingzhi, the East Asian species widely associated with medicinal lingzhi or reishi.

For more than 240 years, the two species have often been mistaken for one another due to their very similar appearance and the tradition of calling all of these similar-looking fungi G. lucidum, potentially causing issues for consumers and the estimated £200 billion ($271.14 billion) traditional Chinese medicine industry.

In traditional medicine, G. lingzhi is valued for its anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties and has recently gained popularity in North American and European markets as a supplement. However, pharmaceutical research on this species is hindered by frequent confusion around its identity, and it is unclear whether G. lucidum shares any of these medicinal benefits, posing a risk to consumer safety and satisfaction.

Ganoderma species are of great interest to scientists due to the compounds they produce, including beta-glucans and triterpenoids. The latter have shown promising results in the treatment of brain tumor cells in mice.

By analyzing historic fungal specimens housed at Kew's Fungarium, the researchers are now confident the two species diverged from one another at least 16 million years ago and can draw a clear distinction between the two. They propose the new common name "false lingzhi" for G. lucidum to dispel confusion around its identity.

Dr. Torda Varga, a Kew research fellow who led the project, says, "Treating these two distantly related fungi as the same species is comparable to treating humans and orangutans as a single species.

"In reality, millions of years of evolution can lead to fundamentally different organisms, including differences in their chemical properties, and this is particularly important in a group of fungi with a long history of use in traditional medicine.

"Accurate identification such as the one undertaken in our study is essential for establishing authenticity, ensuring quality control and providing an evidence-based framework for evaluating the safety and medicinal potential of fungi."

The origins of the mix-up can be traced to 1781, when botanist and entomologist William Curtis first described G. lucidum as a species (although under a different name at the time). Unfortunately, only an illustration of the type specimen (the original fungal material upon which the official scientific description is based) survives, rather than any biological specimen. This has left researchers without any material to study for centuries.

Further confusion stems from the common and Latin names of various medicinal Ganoderma species, with G. lucidum traditionally given to many of them. It has also been frequently applied to Ganoderma fungi that physically resemble one another but have been shown to be distinct species.

All these factors have contributed to considerable confusion and inconsistent identification over the years, with pharmacological data often wrongly attributed to G. lucidum.

Solving the mystery

A breakthrough came in April 2025 when Ganoderma specialist Dr. Viktor Papp from the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE) visited Kew to study its historic Fungarium collections, working closely with his Kew colleagues to tackle the longstanding confusion surrounding G. lucidum. He identified a mislabeled fungus collected on a hazel tree (Corylus avellana) near London that closely matched Curtis' original 1781 description.

The discovery provided the team with valuable genetic material for sequencing. The researchers used the resulting data as a reference point to compare against other publicly available DNA data for G. lucidum.

Researchers traditionally use so-called DNA barcoding, which relies on a short genomic fragment that can be characteristic of each species. However, by analyzing Ganoderma DNA, they found that conventional barcoding works poorly in this group; they could accurately identify only 149 DNA barcoding fragments as G. lucidum out of the 1,130 public sequences potentially assigned to this species.

The finding highlights another source of confusion in species identity within this group. The authors therefore suggested that confident species identification should be based on multiple genomic fragments combined with evolutionary modeling.

Researchers can also study the whole genome, which not only supports confident identification but could also reveal new potential medicinal compounds. However, when they placed the new reference genetic material into the context of all available "G. lucidum" genomes, they found that these genomes belong to other species. In other words, the new material showed that no G. lucidum genome is available to study the biology and medicinal properties of this enigmatic fungus.

There are some indications G. lucidum may have bioactive properties, but the study's authors believe more research is needed to advance understanding of its biology and medicinal properties, as well as to help policymakers and industry stakeholders ensure accuracy and avoid confusion.

Meanwhile, research into the Ganoderma genus continues to yield interesting results. While the Kew-led team has identified distinct European–West/South Asian and East Asian clades of G. lucidum, with the latter possibly representing a new species, a Chinese research group officially described the East Asian lineage as G. sinolucidum in September 2026.