Saturday 16 August 2014

The tree fungus 靈芝 / 灵芝 (Singapore)


靈芝 / 灵芝 língzhī (ganoderma*) is a tree fungus which is much prized for its near-magical healing properties.  

芝 zhī is the ganoderma bit.  

靈 / 灵 líng, as a noun, means “spirit” and adjectivally, it means “effective” (for cures in particular), among other things.  As demonstrated by the “spirit” and “effective” definitions, 靈 / 灵 is almost synonymous with “magical” or “miraculous” when used in the name of this tree fungus.  

靈芝 is gold dust in Chinese medicine or dried mushroom terms.  They are featured in carvings on gift boxes or decorative boxes, in sculpted paintings or paintings in relief that the Chinese like hanging on the wall, and often look like bonsai trees in these representations.

There’re classical Chinese stories featuring people having to steal 靈芝 from the heavily guarded gardens of the Heavenly Emperor at great risk to their own lives to save an ailing parent (usually a mother) on the point of near death.  

I only knew it as a name as a child, and as a vague crinkly half-moon shape image from films and decorations  featuring it.  

We had three casuarina trees in our front garden at home, one of which had a semi-circular woody growth sticking out of the lower part of its trunk, about half an inch thick.  It was so hard that as a child, I could play entertaining guests at the tree and put my toy cups on it.  
One day, a man rang our bell and asked us if he could have it.  It’d always sat there, sticking out of the tree trunk, doing nothing, and we didn’t know what to do with it, so we broke it off and gave it to him.  A few months (or years??) later, it grew back to its former size, and the man came again.  Each time, he’d give us a box of chocolate to thank us.  After a couple more times, we asked him what he wanted it for.  He said it was to be used as a Chinese medicinal ingredient.  We didn’t know enough about Chinese medicinal ingredients, so we just let him have it.

About four months ago, some 50 years on, it suddenly struck me that it might be 靈芝.  Googling it produced the image of that semi-circular woody growth in our casuarina tree trunk.  We could’ve made a lot of money from it, but didn’t recognise its value at the time.

(Singapore, mid-60s)

* Ganoderma is a genus of polypore mushrooms which grow on wood, and include about 80 species, many from tropical regions.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganoderma

** (Update 160224:  I've only just found out from a video clip that its also called turkey tail mushroom.  The maker of the video said his mothers tumours were cured by it after her doctor(s) said she was too old for radiotherapy/chemotherapy.  Haha, as it happened, the video clip was sent by a friend from Turkey...)

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