Psilocybe azurescens
Description
Psilocybe azurescens is a powerful species of psychedelic mushroom known for its high concentrations of psilocybin, psilocin, and baeocystin. This mushroom packs a punch, with up to 1.8% psilocybin by dry weight, making it one of the most potent tryptamine-bearing species 🍄. Belonging to the family Hymenogastraceae, it's prized for its intense psychoactive properties.
🌍 Habitat & Distribution: Psilocybe azurescens thrives along the West Coast of the U.S., particularly in Oregon and Washington, favoring coastal areas near the Columbia River Delta. It’s often found in clusters or growing gregariously on deciduous wood chips and sandy soils rich in woody debris, with a special fondness for dune grasses like Ammophila maritima. This resilient species grows a dense, white mycelial mat, contributing to wood whitening. Fruiting begins in late September and continues through January, making fall and winter prime seasons for its appearance. Though native to the Pacific Northwest, it has been cultivated and found in countries like Germany, New Zealand, and even the United Kingdom.
✨ Physical Features: The cap of P. azurescens is hygrophanous, meaning it changes color with moisture. It starts chestnut to caramel brown and bruises a distinct blue when handled. The gills transition from brown to purplish-black, with white edges and similar blue bruising. Its silky white stem also bruises blue, especially at the base, with the mycelium at the bottom exhibiting the same blue discoloration. The taste? Bitter! 🍽️
🌾 Spores & Fruiting: Psilocybe azurescens leaves behind a dark purplish-black spore print. Fruiting bodies often appear in tufts or gregariously, favoring woody debris and sandy soil environments.
🚫 Legal Status: While federally illegal in the U.S., P. azurescens has seen some decriminalization in states like Oregon and Colorado, and cities like Seattle and Oakland. However, harvesting remains illegal in many areas, with the risk of misdemeanor charges in places like Ilwaco, Washington.
Common names: German (Stattlicher Kahlkopf).
Mushroom Identification
🍄 Cap: The cap of Psilocybe azurescens measures 1.18 to 3.94 inches (3 to 10 cm) in diameter, starting conic or convex and eventually flattening with age, maintaining a pronounced broad umbo (a small bump at the center). Its surface is smooth and sticky when moist due to a gelatinous pellicle, which can be peeled off. The color ranges from chestnut to caramel brown, often bruising blue in spots when handled. The cap is hygrophanous, fading to a light straw color as it dries. With maturity, the cap’s margin becomes irregular and can erode. It’s also translucent-striate, meaning it has fine lines at the edge when moist 🌧️.
🌸 Gills: The gills are sinuate to adnate (curving towards the stem or broadly attached), close together, and have a brown to purplish-black color, darkening where bruised. They feature two tiers of lamellulae (short gills) and have whitish edges, giving them a mottled appearance.
🦠 Spore Print: The spore print is a dark purplish-brown to black, a signature trait of Psilocybe mushrooms, ideal for spore collection enthusiasts 🌿.
🦵 Stem: The stem is 3.54 to 7.87 inches (9 to 20 cm) long and 3–6 mm thick, silky white but turns dingy brown with age, especially at the base. The stem is hollow at maturity and composed of tough, twisted, cartilaginous tissue. Its base thickens and often curves, with coarse white tufts of mycelium—sometimes tinged with azure blue—which form dense rhizomorphs (root-like structures). These rhizomorphs are especially strong, binding wood chips and grass together tightly, making the mushroom tenacious in its substrate. Bruising causes the stem to take on a bluish hue 💙.
🍖 Flesh: The flesh is whitish to pallid brown at the center, rapidly bruising to a deep blue or even indigo-black when damaged, a classic indicator of high psilocybin content 🌈.
👰 Veil: A delicate white, cortinate veil covers the young mushroom, eventually leaving behind a fibrillose annular zone (a ring of fibers) near the upper stem.
👃👅 Odor & Taste: It has a faint to farinaceous odor (like fresh flour), but the taste is extremely bitter, discouraging casual consumption. 🍽️
🔬 Microscopic Features: Spores are elliptic, measuring 12-13.5 x 6.5-8 microns with a germ pore. The basidia (spore-producing cells) are 4-spored, and the pleurocystidia are abundant, fusoid-ventricose (flask-shaped), measuring 23-55 x 9-10 microns. The cheilocystidia on the gill edges are nearly identical.
Look-Alikes
Cap: Hemispheric when young, becoming wavy, rarely umbonate.
Stem: 6–9 cm long, lacks a cortinate zone.
Fruiting: Late September through April.
2️⃣ Psilocybe allenii
Cap: Hemispheric when young, convex when mature, rarely wavy in very mature specimens, never umbonate.
Stem: 4–7 cm long, usually with a cortinate zone.
Fruiting: Mid-September through January.
3️⃣ Psilocybe cyanofibrillosa
Spores: Smaller than P. azurescens.
Pleurocystidia: Lacks clavate-mucronate pleurocystidia.
Cheilocystidia: Long necks, often forked more than two times.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Alan Rockefeller (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Darren Schack (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 3 - Author: Alan Rockefelle (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 4 - Author: Alan Rockefelle (CC BY 4.0)
