Agaricus blazei and Grifola frondosa — Two Important Medicinal Mushrooms

In the previous chapter we examined the most well known of the medicinal mushrooms, Ganoderma lucidum, which has been treasured in China for thousands of years as an herbal drug, medicinal food, and health-producing tonic. In this chapter we consider two other important medicinal mushrooms, Agaricus blazei (Murrill) ss. Heinem. and Grifola frondosa (Dicks.:Fr.) S.F. Gray, which recently have become the most promising and most intensively studied species. A wide range of medicinal traits have been attributed to them for treatment of tumor, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and hepatitis. ^{13 , 22–24}