shroomverse
The Shroomverse alien in a rainy old-growth Oregon forest of giant mossy firs.

SPECIES ATLAS · PSILOCYBE

Psilocybe baeocystis

Named by Singer & A.H. Sm., 1958

Psilocybin record: reported (one or older reports)

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.

Rolf Singer and A. H. Smith published Psilocybe baeocystis in Mycologia 50(1): 141 in 1958. The holotype, at the MICH herbarium, was collected by Sipe in Oregon on 1 November 1945. Guzmán (1983) suggested it might be only a synonym of P. aztecorum, but Species Fungorum keeps it as a separate species with no synonyms.

Named
Singer & A.H. Sm., 1958
Type specimen
Oregon (Species Fungorum: holotype MICH, Sipe, 1 Nov. 1945) (Species Fungorum record 304477; pin = Wikidata coordinates for Oregon (Q824))
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. 1962

    Reported Psilocin reported (Benedict, Brady & Tyler); Guzmán 1983 summarises this as psilocin but not psilocybin

    Method: not stated in the records we read. Benedict, Brady & Tyler 1962, J. Pharm. Sci. 51: 393-394

  2. 1965

    Reported Psilocybin produced in saprophytic (laboratory) culture (Leung, Smith & Paul)

    Method: culture study; method not stated in the records we read. Leung, Smith & Paul 1965, J. Pharm. Sci. 54: 1576-1579

  3. 1968

    Reported Baeocystin and norbaeocystin, new analogues of psilocybin, isolated from P. baeocystis (Leung & Paul; first announced for baeocystin in 1967)

    Method: isolation from culture; method not stated in the records we read. Leung & Paul 1968, J. Pharm. Sci. 57: 1667-1671

  4. 1981

    Reported Psilocybin and psilocin quantified in P. baeocystis (Beug & Bigwood)

    Method: HPLC and TLC. Beug & Bigwood 1981, J. Chromatogr. 207: 379-385

What the record doesn’t show: All analyses we found date from 1962 to 1981 and their texts were not opened, and a 2024 genome study redetermined one herbarium specimen labelled P. baeocystis as P. cyanescens.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 127 occurrence records under this name, 23 of them from Canada, when we checked on October 25, 2026. GBIF held 23 Canadian records on 25 October 2026 (20 from British Columbia, 1 from Nova Scotia, 2 without a province; 15 preserved specimens). 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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