What is the difference between wild reishi and cultivated reishi?

We know that wild reishi is a very precious and scarce medicinal material. At present, China has successfully cultivated one variety artificially. So, what is the difference between wild reishi and cultivated reishi?

1. Different color and shape

They are distinguished by different growing environments. Wild reishi mostly grows on a kind of dead tree trunk in deep mountain forests, with plenty of weeds and scattered rocks nearby, so wild reishi has diverse shapes and varied colors. Cultivated reishi comes from cultivation bases; although growers may deliberately imitate the growing environment of wild reishi, most are relatively uniform in size and shape, with roughly the same color.

2. Different varieties

There are several hundred species of wild reishi in the world. At present, China has relatively clear research on more than ninety species. Some varieties still await further development. As for cultivated reishi, there is currently only one kind, namely red reishi, also called pine-fir reishi, which has a stalk.

3. Different growth periods

Apart from the stalkless red reishi in China, which is annual, most wild reishi are perennial plants in the form of fruiting bodies. Some wild reishi have growth periods of several hundred years, and the medicinal value they accumulate is more remarkable. Its miraculous medicinal effects have draped wild reishi in a layer of mystery. It is extremely rare. Cultivated reishi, by contrast, has a growth period of only one month.

4. Different medicinal value

The longer wild reishi grows, the stronger the medicinal effects it accumulates. With cultivated reishi, however, the medicinal effects decline with each generation; by the fourth generation, the medicinal value of cultivated reishi is negligible.

5. Different growing environments

Wild reishi mostly lives on living tree trunks, bark, wooden stakes or rotten wood. Cultivated reishi, however, is grown on decaying wood, generally mainly on cut logs. For example, the perennial wild flat-cap reishi, known as the tree ear, grows on living tree trunks. It simply cannot be cultivated.

6. Different reproduction

Wild reishi reproduces through sexual inheritance via basidiospores. Two males and one female must combine before it can reproduce into another small wild reishi. Cultivated reishi, however, reproduces asexually. Its further growth is accomplished through mycelial division.

Wild reishi is very rare, and most of what is on the market is artificially cultivated, so everyone must learn to identify it when buying.