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The Shroomverse alien looking over terraced green tea hills in the highlands of Sri Lanka at evening.

SPECIES ATLAS · PANAEOLUS

Panaeolus cyanescens

Named by Sacc., 1887

Psilocybin record: confirmed (several modern analyses)

Full article: Panaeolus Cyanescens: Copelandia and Names

A history of a name and a chemistry record, not an identification guide. No name, picture or description can show that a wild mushroom is safe, and poisonous mushrooms are mistaken for magic mushrooms. If someone may have eaten a wild mushroom, call a poison centre without waiting for symptoms: 1-844-POISON-X in most of Canada, 1-800-463-5060 in Quebec. Call 911 if they’re unconscious, not breathing or having a seizure.

How it was named.

Berkeley and Broome published Agaricus cyanescens in 1871, from a Gardner collection from Sri Lanka (holotype K(M), Gardner 746). The same name had already been published in 1856 (Agaricus cyanescens Mont.), so theirs is illegitimate, and Saccardo replaced it with Panaeolus cyanescens in 1887. Singer's Copelandia cyanescens is listed as a synonym.

Named
Sacc., 1887
First published as
Agaricus cyanescens Berk. & Broome (1871), replaced synonym (nom. illegit.)
Other names in the records
Agaricus cyanescens Berk. & Broome (1871), Copelandia cyanescens (Sacc.) Singer (1951 [1949])
Type specimen
Sri Lanka (Species Fungorum, Agaricus cyanescens Berk. & Broome: holotype K(M), Gardner 746) (Species Fungorum record 461765; pin = Wikidata coordinates for Sri Lanka (Q854))
Name record
Species Fungorum
The pin marks the type locality at the level of detail the record gives: one historical collection, not a range or a place to look. Land outlines: Natural Earth.

The psilocybin record.

Every analysis we could verify, oldest first, including results that found nothing. No amounts are given: they vary between collections and this is not a potency guide.

  1. 1992

    Reported Psilocin, psilocybin, serotonin and urea in material of various origins (Stijve), cited by He et al. 2026 and Gotvaldová et al. 2022 as confirming psilocybin in the species

    Method: not read (paper not opened). Stijve 1992, Persoonia 15: 117-121 (cited in He et al. 2026)

  2. 2000

    Reported Psilocybin and psilocin measured in seized mushrooms identified by morphology; P. cyanescens had the highest levels in the sample

    Method: toxicological analysis (abstract only). Musshoff, Madea & Beike 2000, Forensic Sci. Int. 113: 389-395

  3. 2025

    Confirmed Psilocybin and psilocin measured in cultivated strains confirmed as P. cyanescens by ITS, including strains sold under other names

    Method: HPLC-DAD and HPLC-MS/MS. Cohen et al. 2025, Sci. Rep. 15: 13822

  4. 2026

    Not detected Psilocybin not detected in a 29-year-old fungarium specimen (HMAS63187); the authors suggest sample age as the cause

    Method: HPLC-MS. He et al. 2026, IMA Fungus 17: e167329

What the record doesn’t show: The positive modern data come from cultivated strains, and the one wild specimen tested in 2026 showed none, possibly because of its age.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 1,738 occurrence records under this name, 0 of them from Canada, when we checked on October 25, 2026. Records include unverified observations and old misidentifications, so counts show where people have recorded the name, not where it grows.

See the name on GBIF

Sources

Compiled from the sources above; last checked .

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