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The Shroomverse alien in a beech forest valley in the hills of Serbia in autumn.

SPECIES ATLAS · PSILOCYBE

Psilocybe serbica

Named by M.M. Moser & E. Horak, 1969

Psilocybin record: confirmed (several modern analyses)

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.

Moser and Horak described Psilocybe serbica in the Zeitschrift für Pilzkunde 34(3-4): 138, an issue dated 1968 that Species Fungorum dates to 1969; the title calls it a new psilocybin- and psilocin-forming species from Serbia. In 2011 Borovička, Oborník and Noordeloos ranked P. arcana, P. bohemica and P. moravica as varieties of P. serbica, but Index Fungorum still lists those three as separate current names.

Named
M.M. Moser & E. Horak, 1969
Other names in the records
Psilocybe moravica var. sternberkiana Borov. (2006), Psilocybe serbica f. sternberkiana (Borov.) Borov., Oborník & Noordel. (2011)
Type specimen
Serbia, then Yugoslavia (Species Fungorum: 'former Yugoslavia'; Guzmán 1983: type at IB) (Species Fungorum record 321950; pin = Wikidata coordinates for Serbia (Q403))
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. 1968

    Reported Psilocybin and psilocin reported with the original description (title as cited in Guzmán 1983: 'eine neue Psilocybin und Psilocin bildende Art aus Serbien')

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

  2. 2022

    Confirmed Psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin and norbaeocystin detected in a collection identified only as P. serbica, and in many collections of its varieties arcana, bohemica and moravica

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

  3. 2026

    Confirmed Psilocybin and psilocin quantified in three Greek fungarium specimens identified by ITS as P. serbica var. arcana

    Method: 1H and 31P qNMR, with GC-MS after dephosphorylation. Dadiotis et al. 2026, ACS Omega 11: 62412-62423

What the record doesn’t show: Most modern data are for the varieties arcana, bohemica and moravica, which Index Fungorum treats as the separate species P. arcana, P. bohemica and P. moravica, so how much applies to P. serbica in the narrow sense depends on which treatment is followed.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 463 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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