Ganoderma lucidum biophysical composition and description

Fruiting Body – the fruiting body is the visible part of the Ganoderma. Most of Ganoderma lucidum’s description pertains to this part of the fungi. It is the umbrella like structure common to most mushrooms. Its shade ranges form reddish purple to reddish brown. The cap-like structure is called the pileus and its stem is referred as the stipe. When young, its texture is meaty but turns woody when it matures.

Stem- Its stem usually merges with each other upon contact and is irregular and cylindrical in shape. Environmental and nutritional condition dictates its sizes in which sufficient nutrients leads to a thicker stems. High carbon dioxide concentration leads to a tall slender stems while excess of oxygen can result to a shorter one.

Cap- the cap can be dull red to reddish brown and sometimes black in color. It features pores on its underside, whitish, and brownish when touched. Areas of new growth are whitish, darken to yellow brown and eventually reddish brown at maturity, often with zonations of concentric growth patterns. Spores dispersed from the underside, collected on the surface of the cap giving the powdery brown appearance when dry.

Internal structures are similar for both cap and stem. Tube layer though is not present in its stem.

a. Crust Layer – thick and closely arranged hyphaes makes up the outermost layer. The glossy appearance of the cap is due to its thick, resin filled cell wall. Interwoven thick walled hyphaes makes up the middle layer. Inside these hyphaes are reddish-brown resins which produce the color of the cap. Inner layer have same interwoven structure but this time without resins or pigments. The cell wall in this layer is also thick and it is the transition stage from the crust to become flesh.

b. Flesh Layer – has a cork-like texture because the hyphaes in this layer are pack loosely and have many voids in-between. These interwoven hyphaes contain large vacuoles.

c. Tube Layer – composed of parallel-arranged tubes of hyphaes. The end of the hyphae expands to basidium which is like an “eggplant” in appearance. Basidium has a thin cell wall, dense cytoplasm with two nucleuses. These nucleuses fuse, as the basidium gradually matures, through the process of karyogamy. Through mitosis, these fused nucleuses divide into four sub-nucleuses twice. Coinciding with this process is the formation of sterigmas which produces basidiospores. Upon maturation of the spores, is ejected to the air by means of mechanical force in the process called spore spreading.

To learn more about Ganoderma in the Philippines and its roots to Chinese Culture, please read References