This presentation was something I created for my Herbology class during the Fall 2025 semester, but it ended up becoming something much more personal than just an assignment.
It became a bridge.
A way of bringing what I was learning inside the classroom into the woods here at home. A way of making Chinese medicine feel less like something far away and more like something you can actually kneel down and touch.
For this project, I explored three medicinal mushrooms from the Chinese materia medica, Fú líng, Mǎ bó, and Líng zhī, and paired their textbook functions with what I’ve seen, found, and wondered about in the forests of New Brunswick
Because the truth is, these herbs aren’t just names in a book.
They grow. They adapt. They live in very specific environments, and when you start to understand how they behave in nature, their actions in the body begin to make a different kind of sense.
Not memorized, but felt.
Seeing Medicine in the Landscape
One of the biggest shifts for me during herbology was moving from “what does this herb do” to “how does this herb live.”
Take Fú líng, for example.
On paper, it’s sweet, bland, and neutral. It strengthens the Spleen, drains Dampness, calms the Shen, and promotes urination
But then you learn that it grows underground, wrapped quietly around pine roots, hidden beneath the forest floor, surrounded by moisture, but never overwhelmed by it
And suddenly, it clicks.
Of course it drains Dampness. Of course it stabilizes. It’s been doing that its entire life.
It’s steady. Unseen. Supportive.
The kind of medicine that doesn’t push, it regulates.
When the Medicine Mirrors the Movement
Then there’s Mǎ bó, the puffball mushroom.
If you’ve ever tapped one in the woods and watched that cloud of spores burst out, you already understand it better than any textbook could explain.
In Chinese medicine, Mǎ bó clears Heat from the Lung, soothes sore throats, and stops bleeding. It works quickly, especially in acute conditions
And when you look at how it behaves, it makes perfect sense.
It ripens, builds pressure, and then disperses instantly into the air.
Light. Fast. Responsive.
Even more interesting, it’s not just one mushroom. It’s a group of related species that all produce the same kind of spore mass, and that shared quality is what defines the medicine
That idea alone changes how you think about herbal classification. It’s not always about exact species. It’s about function, behaviour, and energetic similarity.
The Long Game of Tonic Medicine
And then there’s Líng zhī.
Reishi.
The one that always seems to carry a bit of reverence with it.
In the texts, it tonifies Qi, calms the Shen, supports the Lung, and builds long-term vitality
But when you find it in the forest, growing slowly on old wood, glossy, resilient, often returning to the same place year after year, you start to understand why it’s considered a tonic.
It’s not urgent medicine.
It’s steady medicine.
Even here in Canada, where the species we find is often Ganoderma tsugae rather than the classical Ganoderma lucidum, the overlap in function is still there
Which again brings you back to that same idea, medicine isn’t just about names. It’s about patterns.
East Meets Forest
This project also wove in something I’ve been quietly building alongside school, something I call East Meets Forest.
It’s my way of studying Chinese herbs through what grows here in Eastern Canada.
Sometimes the species match. Sometimes they don’t.
But the comparison itself is where the learning happens.
Because when you take the time to notice where something grows, what it’s surrounded by, how it responds to moisture, decay, light, or pressure, you start to understand its role in the body in a way that feels intuitive instead of abstract.
Where I’m Still Learning
This wasn’t written from a place of mastery.
It was written from that space where things are starting to connect, but still expanding.
Where you’re beginning to trust what you see, but you’re also open to refining it, deepening it, or even being wrong.
That’s part of working with this medicine.
It’s layered. It evolves. It asks you to keep paying attention.
Take your time with the presentation below if you want to walk through the full breakdown of each mushroom, their classical functions, and how they show up here in our landscape.