Psilocybe cyanescens
Observation - Psilocybe cyanescens - UK and Ireland. Description: Gregarious, usually tufted, mushrooms abundant on wood chip mulch. Cap caramel coloured when young,
Gregarious, usually tufted, mushrooms abundant on wood chip mulch. Cap caramel coloured when young, fresh and not waterlogged (like many examples in these photos), up to circa 5cm, smooth, waxy-looking and irregularly wavy towards maturity - sometimes acutely so. Gills averagely spaced, more or less adnate, light-golden brown initially but darkening purple-brown with age. The gill edges remaining paler. Stem up to around 10cm, slender, rather tough and fibrous and conspicuously bruising blue - indicative of psilocin/psilocybin presence ('cyanescens' meaning 'turning blue').
Stem base thick and clumpy with rhizomorphs. Spore print purple-brown.
P. cyanescens is believed to be non-native and accidentally introduced to the UK many years ago. Accusatory forefingers are usually pointed in the direction of Kew Gardens. Again.
You can't buy a 'Blueleg Brownie' in any patisserie no matter how fancypants, and that name seems not only ill advised (given the properties of the ingredients), but recently concocted too; it doesn't appear in older literature. At one time the species was placed in - i think - Hypholoma.
Cyanescens has also been dubbed 'The Potent Psilocybe' in certain quarters and i once read (quite possibly on 'Erowid', 'The Shroomery' or the like) that a single cyanescens fruiting body is, on average, roughly equivalent in strength to 10 of the far more famous grassland species. Of course cyanescens is significantly larger in the first place!
Well whatever. This a fascinating, distinctive and beautiful species.
Stem base thick and clumpy with rhizomorphs. Spore print purple-brown.
P. cyanescens is believed to be non-native and accidentally introduced to the UK many years ago. Accusatory forefingers are usually pointed in the direction of Kew Gardens. Again.
You can't buy a 'Blueleg Brownie' in any patisserie no matter how fancypants, and that name seems not only ill advised (given the properties of the ingredients), but recently concocted too; it doesn't appear in older literature. At one time the species was placed in - i think - Hypholoma.
Cyanescens has also been dubbed 'The Potent Psilocybe' in certain quarters and i once read (quite possibly on 'Erowid', 'The Shroomery' or the like) that a single cyanescens fruiting body is, on average, roughly equivalent in strength to 10 of the far more famous grassland species. Of course cyanescens is significantly larger in the first place!
Well whatever. This a fascinating, distinctive and beautiful species.