P. semilanceata has also been confused with the toxic muscarine-containing species Inocybe geophylla, a whitish mushroom with a silky cap, yellowish-brown to pale grayish gills, and a dull yellowish-brown spore print. The mushroom takes its common name from the Phrygian cap, also known as the “liberty cap”, which it resembles; P. semilanceata shares its common name with P. pelliculosa, a species from which it is more or less indistinguishable in appearance. Psilocybe semilanceata, commonly known as the liberty cap, is a species of fungus which produces the psychoactive compounds psilocybin, psilocin and baeocystin. The first step to identifying liberty cap mushrooms is knowing where and when to look for them. Smaller specimens of liberty caps usually have the highest concentrations of psilocybin. Liberty caps are one of the most potent psilocybin mushrooms that exist.
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It enjoys mounds of dung where it can proliferate. It can be mistaken for psilocybe pelliculosa, which can be a serious mistake. It doesn’t like dung but does like a wet, marshy ground with good, natural fertilizer. Placed on a piece of paper while drying out, it is more than likely a Liberty Cap mushroom.
Anyone Can Learn To Identify Liberty Caps
The legality of liberty cap mushrooms is a hot-button issue and one that often causes confusion. Most of the time, liberty cap mushrooms are easy to identify with their bell-shaped pileus or conical cap. The cultivated fruit bodies of liberty caps have an average of 1.12% psilocybin, no psilocin, and .21% baeocystin (a naturally occurring psychoactive compound) (1). You should understand the legal implications of picking liberty cap mushrooms, as such an activity is illegal in much of the world. Hypholoma polytrichi bears a resemblance to P. semilanceata, but it has lighter colored gills (particularly noticeable when comparing the gills of mature caps in both species), and once mature the caps are broad and flat, tending to be wider than they are tall.
- Ultimately, creating the ideal environment to grow liberty cap mushrooms is a challenging task, so foraging for them in grassy patches of land is much easier.
- Eventually I spotted a glistening cap nestled within a tuft of grass.
- Further, the name P. semilanceata had historically been accepted as the lectotype by many authors in the period 1938–68.
- The surface is smooth but it appears fibrous on close inspection and is sometimes colored blue towards the base, sometimes with mycelium still connected which may become bluish tinged, especially during drying.
Spores
The flesh of Liberty Cap mushrooms contains the psychoactive compounds of psilocybin. The Liberty Cap mushroom, also known as a magic mushroom for its psychedelic effects, has long been used as a hallucinogenic in many cultures around the world for thousands of years. The dainty, ribbed and pointed cap on slender stems belie a potentially poisonous little edible growing in grasslands around the world. The gills turn from grey to purplish-brown with age as spores are released. When a mushroom is injured, it releases enzymes that cause the cap and stem to turn blue and bruise purple. These wild mushrooms have captured the imagination of those seeking altered states of consciousness for centuries.
Potential side effects of liberty cap mushrooms
In the early 1960s, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann—known for the synthesis of the psychedelic drug LSD—chemically analyzed P. semilanceata fruit bodies collected in Switzerland and France by the botanist Roger Heim. According to German mycologist Jochen Gartz, the description of the species is “fully compatible with current knowledge about Psilocybe semilanceata.” It is also known in Australia (where it may be an introduced species) and New Zealand, where it grows in high-altitude grasslands.
Panaeolus species
This film becomes apparent if a piece of the cap is broken by bending it back and peeling away the piece. The cap margin is initially rolled inward but unrolls to become straight or even curled upwards in maturity. The Latin word for Phrygian cap is pileus, nowadays the technical name for what is commonly known as the “cap” of a fungal fruit body. The proposal to conserve the name Psilocybe, with P. semilanceata as the type was accepted unanimously by the Nomenclature Committee for Fungi in 2009. Further, the name P. semilanceata had historically been accepted as the lectotype by many authors in the period 1938–68. To resolve this dilemma, several mycologists proposed in a 2005 publication to conserve the name Psilocybe, with P. semilanceata as the type.
- Usually the colour of the liberty cap stipe is creamy white as it reaches closer to the cap, and browner as it reaches closer to the ground, or sometimes even blue near the ground.
- But I also found out that learning to identify liberty caps is well within reach of a motivated amateur.
- All parts of the mushroom will stain a bluish color if handled or bruised, and it may naturally turn blue with age.
- And with an understanding of the proper procedures and safety measures, one can indulge in these fascinating fungi without any legal or health risks.
- The slender yellowish-brown stipe is 4.5–14 cm (1.8–5.5 in) long by 1–3.5 mm (0.04–0.14 in) thick, and usually slightly thicker towards the base.
Where can you find liberty cap mushrooms?
Psilocybe, the genus name, means ‘smooth head’ – a reference to the silkily mooth, scaleless surface of caps of these grassland mushrooms. Beginning in the 19th century, this humble little mushroom was starting to be identified by its common name, the liberty cap. In the United Kingdom, psilocybin mushrooms are labeled a class A drug along with LSD. For example, Rhode Island recently moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of psilocybin mushrooms, while other states like California and Michigan are currently considering similar.
A polymerase chain reaction-based test to specifically identify P. semilanceata was reported by Polish scientists in 2007. In one noted case, an otherwise healthy young Austrian man mistook the poisonous Cortinarius rubellus for P. semilanceata. In one case reported in Poland in 1998, an 18-year-old man developed Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome, arrhythmia, and suffered myocardial infarction after ingesting P. semilanceata frequently over the period of a month. Common side effects of mushroom ingestion include pupil dilation, increased heart rate, unpleasant mood, and overresponsive reflexes. Typical symptoms include visual distortions of color, depth and form, progressing to visual hallucinations. Several reports have been published in the literature documenting the effects of consumption of P. semilanceata.
Liberty Cap Look-Alike species
Join 19,000+ receiving a mind-expanding dose of psychedelic insight every Monday. The surface of the stem is smooth but up close you’ll see it’s fibrous. It also becomes opaque so that you can only see the gills towards the bottom (if at all). As the cap dries out, it changes colour starting from the top down (second row) to ivory or cream (third row). It is translucent such that you can see the gills running down the underside as in the first row above. The cap changes colour based on its state of hydration.
As they mature, the color fades from a rich taupe to a grayish brown. They have long lines that radiate down the moist caps. The bell-shaped, conical caps are barely an inch in diameter.
Liberty Cap mushrooms are so called because of the distinctive hat they wear on their weaving stalks. Of the most potent types of mushrooms found on the floors of wooded areas and in grassy knolls. The gills slope upwards and liberty caps gills only attach to the stem right at the top (the attachment is adnexed). The surface is a bit shiny or oily as well as translucent, so you can see the vertical lines of the gills through the cap.
In the years since, i’ve come to realise the best part of foraging isn’t the free mushrooms. But I felt uncomfortable with buying mushrooms via ethically dubious supply chains. Although many European countries remained open to the use and possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms after the US ban, starting in the 2000s (decade) there has been a tightening of laws and enforcements.
It can be identified by its reddish-brown cap over a pale yellow or white stem. The tops of rotting logs, mounds of peat or mulch, this dark-brown capped mushroom also goes by the names of blue bell and bottle cap. The psilocybe semilanceata is much stronger than its cousin psilocybe pelliculosa.
Flicking the cap before harvesting can help disseminate spores, and slicing the mushroom with your fingernail where the stem reaches the soil can help prevent damage to the mycelium beneath. The darker colored, inedible common conecap (Conocybe tenera) can be distinguished from P. semilanceata by the aforementioned features that apply to Conocybe, in addition to its rust-brown spore print. This species is only mildly psychoactive when compared to the more potent liberty cap. In contrast to P. semilanceata, the edge of the gills beneath the cap lie flat along the bottom, perpendicular to the stem. Mature mushrooms of Panaeolus tend to be dark, but opaque and not shiny in appearance (in contrast to P. semilanceata, which is dark and partially transparent when young and moist, becoming lighter in color and more opaque upon drying).
Closer examination of spores to assess their size and dimensions will require use of an optical microscope. Examination of spore print coloration should never be relied on as a standalone feature of identification, but rather to supplement other features of identification. Like Panaeolus, the stems of Concocybe tend to be more brittle and prone to breaking when the stems are bent.
P. semilanceata is much less common in South America, where it has been recorded in Chile. Guzmán later examined Peck’s herbarium specimen, and in his comprehensive 1983 monograph on Psilocybe, concluded that Peck had misidentified it with the species now known as Panaeolina foenisecii. It is generally agreed that the species is native to Europe; Watling has demonstrated that there exists little difference between specimens collected from Spain and Scotland, at both the morphological and genetic level.
In culture, grown in a petri dish, the fungus forms a white to pale orange cottony or felt-like mat of mycelia. The cap cuticle is up to 90 μm thick, and is made of a tissue layer called an ixocutis—a gelatinized layer of hyphae lying parallel to the cap surface. The slender yellowish-brown stipe is 4.5–14 cm (1.8–5.5 in) long by 1–3.5 mm (0.04–0.14 in) thick, and usually slightly thicker towards the base. When the cap dries from exposure to the sun, the film turns whitish and is no longer peelable.