Sanghuang Mushroom

Long before laboratories took an interest in its polysaccharides, Sanghuang was a slow, patient medicine gathered from the wounded bark of old mulberry trees. Its name literally means mulberry yellow in Chinese, a nod to both its favored host and the golden stain it leaves when simmered. Practitioners across China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan traditionally prepared it as a decoction for digestive upset, diarrhea, and general depletion, while classical Chinese materia medica texts described it among the tonic fungi valued for supporting the liver and fortifying resistance through the seasons. In Taiwan, indigenous communities such as the Bunun and Tsou people traditionally climbed deep into old-growth forest to harvest it from ancient trees, treating it as a hard-won treasure rather than an everyday remedy.