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The Shroomverse alien in a misty English botanic garden in autumn, a small thatched cottage among old trees.

SPECIES ATLAS · PSILOCYBE

Psilocybe cyanescens

Named by Wakef., 1946

Psilocybin record: confirmed (several modern analyses)

Full article: Psilocybe Cyanescens: Taxonomy and Naming

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.

E. M. Wakefield collected the holotype at Kew on 25 October 1911 and published the name in 1946 (Transactions of the British Mycological Society 29: 141). In 2012 Borovička, Rockefeller and Werner designated an epitype collected in Hamburg in 2003, because the Kew holotype is old and in poor condition. Species Fungorum lists no synonyms.

Named
Wakef., 1946
Type specimen
England, Surrey, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Queen's Cottage grounds); holotype collected by E. M. Wakefield on 25 October 1911, K(M) 63976. Epitype: Hamburg, Germany, 26 November 2003 (PRM 901481) (Borovička, Rockefeller & Werner 2012, Czech Mycol. 64: 181-195; pin = Wikidata coordinates for Kew Gardens (Q18748726))
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. 2003

    Confirmed Psilocybin and psilocin detected in Czech material

    Method: GC/MS after silylation. Stříbrný, Borovička & Sokol 2003, Soud. Lék. 48: 45-49 (Europe PMC record)

  2. 2022

    Confirmed Psilocybin and psilocin detected in fungarium specimens, including decades-old ones

    Method: UHPLC-MS (HILIC). Bradshaw et al. 2022, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 88: e01498-22

  3. 2022

    Confirmed Psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin, norbaeocystin and aeruginascin detected in four European collections

    Method: UHPLC-MS/MS. Gotvaldová et al. 2022, Int. J. Mol. Sci. 23: 14068

  4. 2026

    Confirmed Psilocybin and psilocin quantified in indoor-cultivated material whose identity was checked by DNA testing

    Method: HPTLC. Windsor et al. 2026, J. AOAC Int. 109: 37-50

What the record doesn’t show: Guzmán (1983) notes that the first American analysis filed under this name (Benedict et al. 1962) used a mixture of P. cyanescens and P. stuntzii, so early figures can't all be assigned to this species.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 3,967 occurrence records under this name, 160 of them from Canada, when we checked on October 25, 2026. GBIF held 160 Canadian records on 25 October 2026, 153 from British Columbia and 1 from Ontario (128 community observations, 32 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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