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Two fungi, one name, and 16 million years between them

Qurexa Editorial Team27 October 20267 min read 0 0
Two fungi, one name, and 16 million years between them

What happened

On Monday 26 October 2026, researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew published work untangling a mix-up that has lasted 245 years. The study appeared in the journal Plants, People, Planet. It was led by Dr Torda Varga, a research fellow at Kew, with Dr Viktor Papp of the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Dr Masoomeh Ghobad-Nejhad. The mix-up is about a bracket fungus. Bracket fungi are the shelf-shaped ones you see growing out of tree trunks. In 1781, a European bracket fungus was described and given the scientific name Ganoderma lucidum. Separately, in East Asia, there is a fungus used in traditional medicine and sold widely as reishi or lingzhi. Over time, that East Asian fungus also came to be called Ganoderma lucidum. They are not the same thing. The researchers found the two lineages split apart at least 16 million years ago. Part of the reason the confusion lasted so long is that there was nothing to check against. Only an illustration of the original 1781 specimen survived. Then Dr Papp found a mislabelled fungus, collected from a hazel tree near London, that closely matched the original description. That gave the team reference DNA at last. They have proposed a common name for the European species to stop the confusion spreading: false lingzhi.

Why this matters

This sounds like a filing problem. It is actually a problem about what is in the bottle. Reishi or lingzhi is one of the most widely sold mushroom supplements in the world. Products carry the name Ganoderma lucidum on the label. If that name has been applied to two unrelated fungi for two centuries, then the label does not reliably tell you which organism you are buying. Dr Varga put the distance between them in memorable terms: "Treating these two distantly related fungi as the same species is comparable to treating humans and orangutans as a single species." That is a strong comparison, and it is the point. Sixteen million years of separate evolution is a long time. She added that "millions of years of evolution can lead to fundamentally different organisms", and that differences in chemistry matter for fungi used in traditional medicine. Chemistry is the crux. Whatever effects a medicinal fungus may or may not have come from the compounds it produces. Two fungi separated by millions of years need not produce the same compounds in the same amounts. There is a research consequence too, and it is awkward. The team found that none of the available genomes labelled Ganoderma lucidum actually belong to the European species. So its biology and any medicinal properties remain genuinely unknown. Decades of papers using that name may not all be describing the same organism.

What the evidence actually says

It is worth being precise about what this study does and does not claim. It does not say that reishi supplements are harmful. It does not say they do not work. It does not test any product. What it establishes is a naming and identification problem, and it does so with some rigour. The team tested DNA barcoding, the standard method of identifying a species from a short stretch of its DNA. It performed poorly here. Of 1,130 publicly held sequences labelled Ganoderma lucidum, only 149 could be confidently assigned to that species. That is about one in eight. Their recommendation is to combine several genomic fragments with evolutionary modelling, rather than relying on a single barcode. That is more work, and more reliable. There is also a sign that science is correcting itself here. In September 2026, a Chinese research group formally described the East Asian lineage as its own species, Ganoderma sinolucidum. So the two are now being pulled apart from both ends. The honest summary: a widely used name has been shown to cover at least two very different fungi, the European one is still barely studied, and existing genetic records for it are mostly unreliable. None of that tells a consumer whether a specific product does anything. It does tell you the label is weaker evidence than it looks.

Qurexa perspective

We deliver prescription medicines, so we see the difference between a medicine and a supplement every week, and it is a bigger difference than most packaging suggests. A prescription medicine has been through regulatory assessment. The dose is known, the active ingredient is specified, and the risks are documented. A food supplement has not been through that process. It does not have to prove it works, and the species on the label may not even be the species in the capsule, as this research shows. That does not make supplements bad. It does mean the honest advice is different. If you take a mushroom supplement and you also take prescribed medicines, tell your pharmacist. Some supplements interact with medicines. Reishi products, for instance, are often flagged as a possible concern for people on blood-thinning medication, which is exactly the kind of thing a pharmacist is there to check. Your pharmacy team will do that for free, and you do not need an appointment. That conversation takes two minutes and is genuinely worth having.

Practical advice

If you take or are thinking about taking a reishi or lingzhi supplement, here is what is reasonable. Treat the species name on the label with mild scepticism. This research shows the name has covered more than one organism for centuries. Do not use a supplement in place of a prescribed medicine, and do not stop a prescribed medicine because you have started a supplement. Tell your pharmacist or GP what you are taking, including anything herbal or fungal. It belongs on your medicines list. Many people leave supplements off because they do not think of them as medicines. Be especially careful if you take blood thinners, medicines for blood pressure or diabetes, or anything that suppresses the immune system, or if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Be wary of health claims. In the UK, a food supplement is not allowed to claim it treats or cures a disease. If a product does make that claim, that tells you something about the seller. And never eat wild bracket fungi you have identified yourself from a photograph. This study is a reminder that even specialists have struggled to tell these apart with DNA in hand.

What to know

Kew researchers published work on 26 October 2026 showing that the European fungus named Ganoderma lucidum in 1781 and the East Asian fungus sold as reishi or lingzhi are separate species that diverged at least 16 million years ago. The confusion survived because only an illustration of the original specimen existed, until a mislabelled collection from a hazel tree near London provided reference DNA. The team proposes the common name "false lingzhi" for the European species. Of 1,130 public DNA sequences labelled Ganoderma lucidum, only 149 could be confidently assigned to it. None of the available genomes under that name belong to the European species, so its biology is still largely unknown. The study does not test any supplement or make any claim about whether reishi works. What it shows is that the species name on a label is less reliable than it appears. If you take mushroom supplements alongside prescribed medicines, tell your pharmacist. Sources: Phys.org / Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, "False lingzhi unmasked: Scientists crack the 245-year mystery behind a medicinal mushroom mix-up", 26 October 2026, https://phys.org/news/2026-10-false-lingzhi-unmasked-scientists-year.html — Varga et al., Plants, People, Planet, 2026, https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/25722611 — Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, https://www.kew.org/ This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a doctor, pharmacist or other qualified healthcare professional. Always tell your pharmacist or GP about any supplements you take alongside prescribed medicines.

#mycology#Kew#taxonomy#supplements#research#biology

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