Psilocybe yungensis

🏷️ Description

Deep in the misty cloud forests and coffee plantations of Mexico, Colombia, and beyond grows a small, humble, but spiritually potent mushroom — Psilocybe yungensis. 🍂🍃 Known for its orangish conic caps, dense clusters on rotting wood, and its role in ancient Mazatec rituals, this species is a captivating find for mycophiles and ethnobotanists alike.

📖 Taxonomy & History

Psilocybe yungensis was first described in 1958 by mycologists Rolf Singer and Alexander H. Smith, based on specimens from Bolivia’s Nor Yungas Province — hence the name yungensis. 🍃 Later studies by Gastón Guzmán revealed that closely related species, Psilocybe acutissima and Psilocybe isauri, were actually the same species due to overlapping microscopic and macroscopic traits.

🔍 Guzmán placed this mushroom within the section Cordisporae, characterized by its rhomboid spores measuring less than 8 µm.

🌍 Habitat & Distribution

A saprobic species, Psilocybe yungensis helps break down rotting wood and organic debris, playing an important ecological role in forest ecosystems. It’s found growing in dense clusters on decomposing stumps, logs, and woody debris, rarely appearing alone.

📌 Known Locations:

• Mexico: Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, Tamaulipas

• South America: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador

• Caribbean: Martinique

• Asia: China (reported in 2009)

🗻 Elevation: Typically between 1,000 and 2,000 meters (3,300 to 6,600 ft)

🌦️ Season:

• June–July in Mexico and Colombia

• January in Bolivia

🔎 Identification

🍄 Cap

• Shape: Conical to bell-shaped, rarely flattening with age

• Size: Up to 2.5 cm (1.0 in) in diameter

• Surface: Smooth, sticky when moist, with faint radial grooves near the edge

• Color: Fresh caps range from dark reddish-brown to rusty or orangish-brown, turning dull yellowish-brown or "dingy straw" as they dry

• Feature: Often sports a prominent umbo (central bump)

🌿 Gills

• Attachment: Adnate to adnexed (broadly to narrowly attached)

• Spacing: Close to crowded

• Color: Dull gray when young, becoming purplish-brown as spores mature

📏 Stem

• Size: 3 to 5 cm (1.2 to 2.0 in) long, 1.5 to 2.5 mm (0.06 to 0.10 in) thick

• Color: Pale brown at the top, darkening to reddish-brown at the base

• Surface: Densely covered in whitish fibrils when young, which wear off with age

• Veil: Has a fleeting cortinate partial veil, leaving sparse remnants on the cap edge or upper stem, but no ring

• Bruising: All parts stain blue when injured, darkening to near black as they dry — a hallmark of psilocybin content 💙

🔬 Microscopic Features

• Spore Print: Dark purplish-brown

• Spores: Rhomboid to elliptical, 5–6 by 4–6 µm, thick-walled with a prominent germ pore

• Basidia: Club-shaped, mostly four-spored, 13–19 by 4.4–6.6 µm

• Pleurocystidia: Ventricose with a sharp tip, 14–25 by 4.4–10.5 µm

• Cheilocystidia: Variable, 14–40 by 4.4–7.7 µm, and abundant

• Clamp Connections: Present

✨ Cultural Significance

Among the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Psilocybe yungensis is known as a “hongo adivinador” (divinatory mushroom). It’s traditionally used in entheogenic rituals to induce visionary states and spiritual insight. 🌌🍄

👀 Look-Alikes

Few mushrooms resemble Psilocybe yungensis, though it may superficially remind foragers of Psilocybe aztecorum. Key differences lie in growth habit (wood versus soil) and cap coloration.

⚠️ Activity & Use

While moderately psychoactive, precise chemical analyses are limited. Like other psilocybin mushrooms, it produces a blue-staining reaction upon injury, a chemical indicator of psilocybin and psilocin presence.

Photo sources:

Photo 1 - Author: Alan Rockefeller (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Photo 2 - Author: Alejandra Denisse Hernández (CC BY 4.0)

Photo 3 - Author: Alan Rockefeller (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Photo 4 - Author: Alan Rockefeller (CC BY-SA 4.0)