Psilocybe natalensis and P. ochraceocentrata: what the names and the evidence show

Treat Psilocybe natalensis and Psilocybe ochraceocentrata as two scientific names, each tied to its own reference material. A 2026 paper in a Royal Society journal named the second one and, in passing, reported that a widely circulated ‘Natal’ label did not match the type of the first (Bradshaw et al., 2026). It is easy to turn that into “natalensis was renamed”. The sources do not say that, and this guide explains why.

Three questions are easier to understand when kept apart: what name was scientifically published, which specimens a study examined, and which labels people applied to material in circulation. Evidence for one does not settle the others. This guide is about names and evidence only. It is not a way to identify any mushroom, and it does not say anything about effects or strength.

What is Psilocybe natalensis, and is the name still in use?

Psilocybe natalensis is a species name published by Gartz, D.A. Reid, M.T. Sm. & Eicker in the journal Integration (volume 6, page 29, 1995). The Index Fungorum record lists a holotype held at LZ (the Leipzig herbarium code used in the later paper), collected by Gartz and Smith on 22 January 1994 from fertilised pasture soil in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. As of 4 October 2026 the same record gives the name itself as the current name.

That is a statement about one registry. We did not search other databases, and a registry entry is not the same as a taxonomic opinion. What we can say is that we found no source treating the name as a synonym or as discarded, and the 2026 paper still uses it for the species typified from KwaZulu-Natal (Bradshaw et al., 2026).

The same paper sequenced the holotype of P. natalensis (specimen LZ 6266, collected in 1994). The sequences did not match any publicly available sequence, and the holotype grouped near P. chuxiongensis (typified from Yunnan, China) and P. maluti (typified from South Africa) (Bradshaw et al., 2026). In other words, the type of the name has now been read, and it is a different thing from the sequences that had been filed under related labels.

What is Psilocybe ochraceocentrata, and when was it named?

Bradshaw and colleagues gathered six collections of mushrooms from Zimbabwe and South Africa, on or near decomposing herbivore dung, and compared their DNA with sequences from type specimens of other species. They report that African specimens originally identified as P. cubensis (or P. cf. cubensis or P. cf. natalensis) form a separate group, sister to the group containing the P. cubensis type, and they describe it as a new species (Bradshaw et al., 2026).

The holotype (field code CS-3006) was collected on 14 January 2013 in the Matobo Hills, Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. Its sequences are in GenBank under PQ315824 (ITS), PQ317397 (EF1a), PQ317404 (RPB1) and PQ317412 (RPB2) (Bradshaw et al., 2026). The Index Fungorum record for the name matches the paper’s holotype and publication. The epithet refers to an ochre-yellow colour at the centre of the cap. We do not describe the species’ appearance further: that would be identification guidance, which this site does not give.

The authors report that the two species last shared a common ancestor about 1.5 million years ago, with a wide uncertainty range (about 0.71 to 2.55 million years), and that both are associated with herbivore dung (Bradshaw et al., 2026). For the wider history of P. cubensis see our cubensis taxonomy guide.

Why do the preprint and the final paper use different wording?

Because they are different versions at different stages. Version 1 of the preprint, posted in December 2024, used “nom. prov.”, a provisional name, (Bradshaw et al., 2024 preprint). The March 2026 paper is the formal description. A page that still says “nom. prov.” may simply predate it, and a page citing only the preprint should not silently replace the final paper. Check which version a source relies on before calling two sources contradictory.

The two versions agree on the main finding as the authors state it in their abstracts: an African lineage that is the closest wild relative of P. cubensis, diverged about 1.5 million years ago (preprint abstract; final abstract, indexed by Europe PMC). We did not compare the two texts line by line beyond the passages cited here.

Did the 2026 paper say ‘Natal’ mushrooms were renamed?

No. The paper’s own wording is narrower. In the Discussion the authors say that checking public DNA records against type specimens revealed “widespread misapplication of names to contemporary samples”. As an example they give a sequence (GenBank OK491080.1) from the commercial strain called P. natalensis, also known as ‘Natal Super Strength (NSS)’. It did not match the sequence of the P. natalensis type specimen. Instead, four of the five publicly deposited sequences clustered with P. ochraceocentrata (Bradshaw et al., 2026).

Here is what that does and does not establish, taking it at the accession level.

• It concerns one labelled commercial strain, represented by public DNA sequences. The main text names one accession (OK491080.1) and says four of five public sequences clustered with the new species. It does not say, in the main text we read, which five sequences were counted or whether OK491080.1 is among the four. That detail may be in the supplementary material, which we did not open.
• The GenBank record for OK491080.1 is itself labelled “Psilocybe aff. natalensis” (a qualified name, meaning only “with an affinity to”). It records a South African origin, a collection date of 20 July 2020, a voucher on an online observation site, and material “cultivated from a spore print”. It was submitted in October 2021 (GenBank record).
• The authors call this a misidentification of the commercial strain. They do not report testing every mushroom, culture or product ever sold as natalensis, ‘Natal’, ‘Nats’ or NSS.
• The paper makes no claim about the strain’s history or origin, or about any property of it. It is a statement about which species name the DNA supports.

So “NSS is really ochraceocentrata” is a defensible reading of that one finding as the authors report it, but “all Nats are ochraceocentrata” goes beyond it. An informal label needs its own provenance: the exact wording, where it appeared, which material it was attached to, and the evidence for any new determination. The scope of a claim should never be broader than the investigation behind it.

Are a new species, a re-identified sample and a relabelled product the same thing?

No. Four different kinds of change are often blurred into one:

• A new species description recognizes and names a taxon (here, P. ochraceocentrata in 2026).
• A revised identification changes the name applied to a particular specimen or sequence (the NSS-labelled sequences in the paper).
• A synonymy decision concerns how scientific names relate under a taxonomic treatment. We found none in the sources read that treats P. natalensis as a synonym of the new name.
• A commercial relabelling changes the wording used for material in circulation. It does not itself supply evidence for any of the above.

These can influence one another, but they are not interchangeable. A revised identification does not erase the original species name, and a change on a package is not a taxonomic act. That is why this guide avoids a single before-and-after arrow covering all named material.

How should conflicting DNA results be read?

Start by asking whether two sources examined the same material, then compare the DNA regions, reference sequences, method and date. A match to a database record is not the same as a multi-region comparison against type material. The paper illustrates why: about 12% of the 114 public P. cubensis ITS sequences it examined were misidentified as other taxa, and 61% were truncated, and the average ITS difference between P. cubensis and P. ochraceocentrata was about 1% (Bradshaw et al., 2026). Public databases are useful but uneven.

Support was also not identical at every gene. The African specimens grouped together, separate from the P. cubensis type, with strong support at three regions (ITS 97%, EF1a 99%, RPB2 100%), but they were not reciprocally separate from P. cubensis at a fourth (RPB1) (Bradshaw et al., 2026). Readers do not need to resolve the sequence analysis themselves. A responsible profile explains which identification it follows and gives enough detail for a specialist to check it. Where that is unfinished, “association unresolved” is more honest than a confident guess.

What is still unresolved about these two names?

• Which specific public sequences make up the “four of five” that clustered with P. ochraceocentrata, and where they came from. This sits in material we did not read.
• Whether any other material sold or shared under natalensis-style names belongs with either species. The paper does not test it.
• How widely either species is distributed. The authors describe P. ochraceocentrata as appearing endemic to Africa and say they know of no authenticated African records of P. cubensis (Bradshaw et al., 2026); that is their reading of the records they examined, not a survey.
• Whether other taxonomists will accept the new species. The paper is recent, and we found no formal opinion on it in the sources used.

For profiles, this means keeping the two scientific records distinct, preserving older labels in the source history with their context, and updating a caption only when the pictured specimen can be connected to the correction. A label change is not a reason to carry an alleged origin, reputation or experience from one species to another. For the general problem of names, strains and varieties see how to compare cubensis names, the overview of magic mushroom names and our guide to researching origin stories.

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