Mushroom Identification
Introduction

According to current estimates, there are 209 species of hallucinogenic mushroom, of which most fall into two broad groups. These are that of the Psilocybe family, and that of the family that contains the fly-agric, Amanita muscaria, and its close relative the panther cap, the Amanitaceae family. Both fungi are closely related to the deadliest of species, the
Destroying Angel, Amanita virosa, and the Death Cap, Amanita phalloides.  

The second group comprising those fungi, within the genus Psilocybe, that contain the active alkaloid ingredients psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine) and psilocin (4-hydroxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine:  these are the ones that we typically mean by the term “ magic mushrooms”.  There are currently 186 known psilocybin species (a list which is growing all the time – of which 76 occur in Mexico alone. To pick a mushroom at random in Mexico is to stand a very good chance of picking a hallucinogenic one, which is probably why it is one part of the world where there is a genuinely old tradition of psilocybin usage.  Of the growing plethora worldwide, 2 deserve special mention.

The first is the Liberty Cap, or Psilocybe semilanceata.  In Britain this delicate little mushroom appears in the autumn months, growing in great abundance in ‘troops’.  It is found in pastures across the British Isles, but especially in acid upland pastures, the wet, chilly sheep fields of Wales, the Pennines, Devon and Cornwall, and Scotland.  Somewhat parochially, we think of it as ‘our’ magic mushroom, but in fact it grows in many temperate regions across the world.  It is found across western Europe, from Scandinavia in the north to the Spanish Picos mountains in the south; from Ireland in the west to Czech Republic and Russia in the east. Moreover, it grows across great swathes of the American Pacific Northwest, and also in New Zealand and Tasmania.  Contrary to popular wisdom, it is not coprophilic, that is it is not a dung –lover, but actually grows saprophytically upon the dead root cells of certain grasses.  Despite its small size – the cap is only about a centimeter cross – it is home not to gnomes but to species of mycophagous sciarid flies, the grubs of which are familiar to anyone who has ever picked and dried the mushrooms .

It is commonly known as the Liberty Cap because of the distinctive shape of its cap, which resembles the Phrygian bonnets worn by French revolutionaries when they stormed the Bastille.  It seems to have acquired this name in Britain during the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, perhaps in  response to palpable anxieties surrounding the very real possibility of a Napoleonic invasion: the sudden overnight appearance of troops of Liberty Caps might very well have been taken as an unwelcome portent of a similar incursion by the French.  These days, and somewhat tellingly, it is the mushroom’s resemblance to the archetypal goblin’s cap that particularly arrests attention.  This iconic shape made it a potent counter cultural badge during the 1980s and 1990s, when it appeared on T-shirts, postcards and album covers.

As luck would have it , this one species that grows so abundantly in the world happens also to contain a high and predictable concentration of psilocybin: about 1 per cent.  It contains trivial amounts of psilocin, but significant amounts (0.36 %) of another psychoactive alkaloid, baeocystin (4-phosphoryloxy-N-methyltryptamine.  Were these concentrations not so stable, dosage would be impossible to gauge (as is the case with certain other psychoactive species) and the mushroom would probably not have been adopted as a psychoactive drug.  As it is, any twenty mushrooms picked in different parts of the world will have, on average, the same concentration of active ingredients, and therefore the same pharmacological effects.

The second notable psilocybin mushroom is the mighty and noble Psilocybe cubensis.  It was first collected by the American mycologist Franklin Summer Earle (1856-1929) in 1904 in Cuba, hence its species epithet (although he originally placed it in the genus Stropharia). It is much larger than it’s diminutive cousin, its distinctive golden brown flying saucer-shaped cap reaching sizes of up to eight centimeters across.  It most definitely is coprophilic, and sprouts from the dung of bovines, or from well manured ground, throughout the semi-tropical regions of the world.  It is found in the south-east United States especially Florida, Louisianan and Mississippi, in Mexico, Cuba and the Northernmost countries of South America; in Australia, notably Queensland; and in India and South East Asia, especially Vietnam and Thailand.  The introduction of cattle-farming (usually through Western imperialist expansion) has undoubtedly done much to increase the frequency of occurrence of cubensis around the world. Whether cattle-farming actually spread the mushroom to new countries, or simply provided the already occurring species with a brand-new ecological habitat to colonise, is unknown.  But what makes this species so important is that it has proved the easiest  to cultivate:  most of the magic mushrooms bought and sold, or grown in home terrariums, are cubensis.

© Shroom Liberation Front 2007

For all aficionados of finding native magic mushrooms (wherever you live in the world) - we can't reccomend this book highly enough. This bood is perhaps the ultimate guide book for identifying many of the known magic (psilocybin containing mushrooms. Many of our identification techniques for the four mushrooms we've featured, came from this book. Please support the author by purchasing this book.