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SPECIES ATLAS · PSILOCYBE

Psilocybe fimetaria

Named by (P.D. Orton) Watling, 1967

Psilocybin record: disputed

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.

P.D. Orton described Stropharia fimetaria in 1964 in Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Watling moved it to Psilocybe in 1967; Index Fungorum cites the combination to Lloydia 30: 150, the page where Benedict, Tyler & Watling reported psilocybin in it.

Named
(P.D. Orton) Watling, 1967
First published as
Stropharia fimetaria P.D. Orton (1964)
Other names in the records
Stropharia fimetaria P.D. Orton
Type specimen
Great Britain (Index Fungorum: holotype K(M) 85078). (Index Fungorum record, Stropharia fimetaria; pin = Wikidata coordinates (Q23666))
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. 1967

    Reported Psilocybin reported (Benedict, Tyler & Watling, Lloydia 30: 150)

    Method: not read (paper not opened). Guzmán 1983, The Genus Psilocybe (Beih. Nova Hedwigia 74), Table 11, archive.org scan

  2. 2022

    Not detected No psilocybin, psilocin or related tryptamines detected in two Czech collections (four fruiting bodies), one analysed a few months after collection; the collection did not turn blue

    Method: UHPLC-MS/MS. Gotvaldová et al. 2022, Int. J. Mol. Sci. 23: 14068 (full text PMC9693126)

What the record doesn’t show: The only modern analysis is negative but rests on two Czech collections whose identity the authors could not compare with other sequences; the 1967 positive report was not opened.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 479 occurrence records under this name, 5 of them from Canada, when we checked on October 25, 2026. GBIF lists 5 occurrence records from Canada under this name (checked 2026-10-25); the records are not verified identifications. 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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