Tidal Wave mushrooms: what contest records document, and what they cannot show

Search for Tidal Wave and you will mostly find claims. This guide goes the other way: it lists the dated records in which the name appears, says what each one documents, and says where the evidence stops. It is a note on a name, in the same spirit as our guides to Golden Teacher and Penis Envy.

What kind of name is Tidal Wave?

It is a label for cultivated material, of the kind growers and sellers call a strain or cultivar. It is not a species and not a botanical variety. In the Fall 2022 contest table below, Psilocybe cubensis, the species, sits in one column and “Tidalwave” sits in a separate cultivar column (Oakland Hyphae, 2022). A 2021 news report on the same contest series notes that people often say “strain” where “cultivar” is the technical term (Inverse, 2021).

The difference matters because a species name is governed by taxonomy, while a label like this is not. We found no formal registry or published description for Tidal Wave in the records read for this article. For the general vocabulary, see our guide to magic mushroom names.

Where does the name Tidal Wave appear in dated records?

Four records matter, and they are not equal. Oakland Hyphae's own pages call the contest both the Psilocybin Cup and the Hyphae Cup, and the table sets out what each record documents and what it leaves out.

The earliest dated record we read is the April 2021 news report. Our film says the name appeared in grower communities around 2020. We did not find a dated record from that period in the sources opened for this article, so we treat April 2021 as the earliest record we read, not as the first use.

What does the Fall 2022 Hyphae Cup table say about Tidal Wave?

The file the table comes from is titled “Fall 2022 Hyphae Cup Awards Announcement”. It is a 12-slide deck whose metadata gives 17 December 2022 as its creation date. Its main table runs across four slides and lists 55 rows. Two rows carry “Tidalwave” in the cultivar column: CUP290 (sample name “TW3 MMF”) and CUP302 (sample name “Tidal Wave Bob”), submitted by different entrants. Both have Psilocybe cubensis in the “Species of Origin” column (Oakland Hyphae, 2022).

Those fields are what the report records for each entry. The slides we read contain no statement that anyone checked the species or cultivar fields independently, and several other rows carry the table's own “NEEDS CONFIRMATION” flag in those fields. The two Tidalwave rows do not carry that flag, but the absence of a flag is not a confirmation.

A version note belongs here. The post that offers the full report names it Fall22HC_v3 and lists two corrections: “Corrected Table Order Errors” and “Added Late Entrants & Corrected Name Errors” (Oakland Hyphae post). The file we read is the earlier slide deck, not that report, and we could not open the full report file. We therefore cannot say whether either Tidalwave row changed. Anyone quoting a number or a name from this contest should say which file it came from rather than circulating a screenshot.

Any numbers in a table need the same care, and this article does not quote them for any entry carrying the name. The announcement reports each entry's compounds in mass-per-mass units, and for the two Tidalwave rows the printed compound columns add up, within rounding, to that row's own total column. That total therefore covers every compound column printed, not a single compound. We do not interpret the column abbreviations, which the slides we read do not define, and we do not rank the entries.

Does a contest result show what a name stands for?

No, and the records themselves show why. In Tripsitter's table of the Spring 2021 results, one entrant has two entries listed as Tidal Wave, and the two reported results differ substantially from each other (Tripsitter). We do not reproduce those results, because this article gives no figure or placement for any entry carrying the name. The point is the pattern: the same label, the same entrant and the same contest produced clearly different reports.

The Fall 2022 rows add a second caution. The two contests do not report in the same way: the Fall 2022 announcement reports in mass-per-mass units, while Tripsitter's Spring 2021 table reports as percentages, and the slides do not state a dry-weight basis, so the two cannot simply be converted into one another. The totals are also built differently: in Tripsitter's Spring 2021 rows the total is made up of fewer compound columns than the total in the Fall 2022 rows. A comparison across the two contests needs the same compounds, units, material and method. None of this is evidence that one record is wrong. It shows that a label is not a measurement.

Peer-reviewed work finds the same kind of spread. A 1982 study of cultivated Psilocybe cubensis found psilocybin varied over a factor of four across harvests from one culture, and by over ten times between samples from outside sources (Bigwood and Beug, 1982). In a 2026 study of 14 named strains grown under identical laboratory conditions, total tryptamines still varied more than 7.8-fold between strains, and psilocybin also varied between individual fruiting bodies of the same strain (Sharchaton et al., 2026). Neither study examined Tidal Wave. Both show why one sample cannot stand for a name.

Replication does not fix this. Oakland Hyphae says its numbers are the mean of replicates (Oakland Hyphae post). Repeated measurements make one sample's number more reliable. They do not add more mushrooms to the population the number describes. A headline like “strongest” needs a defined comparison of samples, compounds, units, method and period. Our guide to mushroom potency claims sets out how to read those pieces, and this one gives no name a ranking.

Is Tidal Wave a cross of two other names?

It is often described that way. Tripsitter's page calls it a cross between Penis Envy and B+ (Tripsitter), and our film says it is “usually described” so. In the sources we opened we found no breeder's record, no dated first-hand account and no genetic comparison documenting that cross. This article therefore treats the parentage as a repeated description, not as a documented fact.

What would count? Traceable original records, such as a dated account from the person who made the cross or lab data comparing the named material with the others. It would also need a clear account of how the material was authenticated. A later recollection is testimony, which is useful but different from a contemporaneous record. Our guide to researching origin stories sets out the same tests for any name.

Genetic evidence on labels is mixed, and neither of the two sources below mentions Tidal Wave in the text we searched. An 81-genome study of spores bought from commercial vendors says that, because of the legal status of culturing these fungi, verifiable biobanks do not exist, so its data rely on commercial naming. In its tree, many genomes sharing a strain name but bought from different spore banks clustered together “as expected”, while one sample labelled as a different genus carried P. cubensis sequence and was likely mislabelled (McKernan et al., 2021). A 2025 review summarises that work as showing commercially labelled cultivars often lack genetic similarity across suppliers (Kurzbaum et al., 2025). Those two descriptions of one dataset are not identical, which is a reason to read the paper, not just a summary of it.

Are Tidal Wave and Tidalwave the same thing?

The Fall 2022 table spells the cultivar field “Tidalwave” and one sample name “Tidal Wave Bob”, and the 2021 news report also writes “Tidalwave”. The spacing difference is a spelling variation inside the records, and it is reasonable to read them together. It is not a reason to merge unrelated records automatically. A suffix such as the one in “Tidal Wave Bob”, or a code such as “TW3”, may be a sample name, a selection name or a submitter's note. Each needs its own documentation.

We give no description of how the mushroom looks. Descriptions circulate in grower communities, and our film gives one, but no record we read documents a diagnostic appearance, and nothing here is an identification guide. A generated image or a loosely matching photograph would not authenticate a name.

How does this article relate to our Tidal Wave film?

Our documentary Tidal Wave follows one reported contest result. It does not rank or promote the name, and neither does this article. Its point is the same as ours: one sample is not a strain. This article adds the Fall 2022 entries and the version problem, and it is more cautious than the film on three points: the date the name arose, how the mushroom looks and how far the genetic evidence on labels goes.

What is still not known about Tidal Wave?

• When and by whom the name was first used. The earliest dated record we read is April 2021.
• Whether the two Fall 2022 rows, or the two Spring 2021 rows, share any lineage with each other or with any other material carrying the name.
• Whether the species and cultivar fields in the contest tables were independently verified.
• Whether the Fall 2022 rows changed in the corrected full report (version 3), which we could not open.
• Any parentage, breeder attribution or origin date. We found no original record, so we state none.
• What any material sold, shared or grown under the name contains. Records of submitted samples do not answer that.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about mushroom names and the limits of competition records. It is not medical, legal or identification advice, and it does not recommend any product.