Psilocybe neoxalapensis

🏷️ Description

Deep in the misty mountain cloud forests of Veracruz, Mexico, and the protected reserves of Costa Rica, a small but extraordinary mushroom hides beneath the leaf litter. Meet Psilocybe neoxalapensis — a rare, reddish-brown treasure with mind-expanding potential and a growing conservation concern. 🌿🌧️

⚠️ Why It Matters: Psilocybe neoxalapensis is more than a beautiful mushroom — it's a biocultural relic, a psychedelic species tied to fragile ecosystems. Its rarity, psychoactive properties, and ecological specificity make it a candidate for urgent conservation efforts.

🔎 Identification

🧢 Cap

The cap is conical to bell-shaped, often sporting a prominent papilla (a nipple-like tip). It ranges from 0.3 to 1.2 inches (8 to 30 mm) across and is hygrophanous, changing color with moisture.

• When moist: Deep reddish-brown to chocolate brown, sometimes tinged with greenish-blue hues. Fine radial lines from the gills beneath may show through.

• When dry: Fades to light yellow-brown or olivaceous-brown.

Despite its small size, it commands attention with its earthy tones and subtle iridescence. ✨

🌿 Gills

Narrow, moderately crowded, and cream-colored when young, darkening to purple-brown with a lighter edge as they mature. They are adnexed to sinuate (notched) in attachment to the stem.

🟤 Spore Print

A distinctive deep reddish purple-brown — a fingerprint of the Psilocybe genus. 🧬

📏 Stem

Slender and slightly tapering, the reddish-brown stem measures 1 to 2 inches (30 to 50 mm) in length and 0.04 to 0.08 inches (1 to 2 mm) thick.

• Paler towards the top.

• Lower half is adorned with floccose (woolly) whitish fibrils.

• Ends in a long whitish pseudorhiza, stretching up to 5.9 inches (150 mm) into the substrate — anchoring it deep in moist, rich soil.

A fragile veil sometimes leaves a dark annular zone, hinting at the gill dusting of spores.

👃 Taste and Odor

Described as farinaceous (like raw flour), with a curious hint of oil paint — a quirky combo not uncommon in psychedelic Psilocybes.

💙 Blue Staining

Though all parts may stain blue when bruised, this is often hard to see because of the mushroom's natural reddish-brown pigmentation. Still, the bluing confirms the presence of psilocybin, the compound behind its psychoactive power. 🔵

🔬 Microscopic Features

• Spores: Subellipsoid in side view, rhomboid in front view, measuring (3.5–) 5–6 (–7) × 6.5–8.5 μm.

• Basidia: Four-spored, 14–25 × 4.5–7.5 μm.

• Cheilocystidia: Type A: Narrowly lageniform (flask-shaped), sometimes branched, 15–27 × 5–7 μm. Type B: Utriform to subventricose-subcylindrical, 25–32 × 6–9 μm.

These unique microscopic traits, along with DNA sequencing, place this species firmly in the Psilocybe fagicola complex.

🗺️ Habitat and Range

Grows in moist, rich soils of mountain cloud forests.

Known from only 10 localities:

• 7 in Veracruz, Mexico (Banderilla, Xalapa, Acajete, Tlalnehuayocan, Rafael Lucio, and Yecuatla).

• 3 in Costa Rica, 2 of which are within national reserves.

Due to its limited range and the rapid degradation of its forest habitat, P. neoxalapensis is considered Endangered.

📉 Population and Conservation

• Specimens in Mexico were mostly collected between 1980–1994 in fragmented suburban forests under human pressure.

• Costa Rican collections date between 1994–2003, and benefit from partial protection.

• Climate models predict a 68% reduction in suitable habitat for Mexican populations within 60 years.

Combined with increasing recreational use of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the species faces multiple threats to survival.

🧬 Taxonomy and Naming

Originally described in 2005 as Psilocybe novoxalapensis, the name was deemed invalid. It was correctly renamed Psilocybe neoxalapensis in 2009 by Guzmán, Ram.-Guill. & Halling. Its classification is supported by DNA sequencing and is phylogenetically tied to:

• Psilocybe fagicola

• Psilocybe oaxacana

• Psilocybe banderillensis

• Psilocybe columbiana

• Psilocybe keralensis

• Psilocybe herrerae

• Psilocybe teofiloi

Photo source: Alan Rockefeller (CC BY-SA 4.0)