shroomverse
The Shroomverse alien looking over misty cloud-forest mountains and a small village in Oaxaca at dawn.

SPECIES ATLAS · PSILOCYBE

Psilocybe mexicana

Named by R. Heim, 1957

Psilocybin record: confirmed (several modern analyses)

Full article: Psilocybe Mexicana: Taxonomy, Early Research

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.

Roger Heim first described the species in French in 1956 and published the name Psilocybe mexicana in the Revue de Mycologie 22(1): 77 in 1957, from Oaxaca. Guzmán (1983) records that Heim and Wasson later designated a 1953 Wasson collection as the type, and takes the PC collection as the holotype. Species Fungorum lists four later names as synonyms, among them P. galindoi.

Named
R. Heim, 1957
Other names in the records
Psilocybe galindoi Guzmán (1978), Psilocybe armandii Guzmán & S.H. Pollock (1979), Psilocybe subacutipilea Guzmán, Saldarr., Pineda, G. García & L.-F. Velázquez (1994), Psilocybe pileocystidiata Guzmán & Ram.-Guill. (2004)
Type specimen
Oaxaca (Species Fungorum: holotype PC 0085751); Guzmán 1983 takes the Paris collection 'Wasson, Aug. 14, 1953' as the holotype (Species Fungorum record 304487 and Guzmán 1983; pin = Wikidata coordinates for Oaxaca (Q34110))
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. 1958

    Confirmed Psilocybin isolated in crystalline form, with traces of psilocin (Guzmán 1983's summary of Hofmann et al.)

    Method: isolation (per Guzmán 1983 and Gotvaldová et al. 2022; paper not opened). Hofmann, Heim, Brack & Kobel 1958, Experientia 14: 107-109

  2. 1958

    Reported Title reports the demonstration of psilocybin and psilocin, in a study of fruit-body and sclerotium formation of P. mexicana in culture (Heim, Brack, Kobel, Hofmann & Cailleux)

    Method: not read (paper not opened). Heim et al. 1958, C. R. Acad. Sci. 246: 1346-1351 (Europe PMC record)

  3. 1959

    Reported Psilocybin and psilocin named as two psychotropic compounds from Mexican mushrooms (title)

    Method: not read (paper not opened). Hofmann et al. 1959, Helv. Chim. Acta 42: 1557-1572

  4. 2022

    Confirmed Psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin, norbaeocystin and traces of aeruginascin detected in one ITS-documented collection, consistent with Hofmann's findings

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

What the record doesn’t show: In a 2025 study, cultivated strains sold as 'Mexicana' and as P. galindoi sequenced as P. tampanensis, so commercial material under this name may not be this species.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 344 occurrence records under this name, 1 of them from Canada, when we checked on October 25, 2026. GBIF held 1 Canadian record on 25 October 2026, a preserved specimen from British Columbia. 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 .

Save to Pinterest