shroomverse
The Shroomverse alien on a damp autumn campus above the grey water of Puget Sound.

SPECIES ATLAS · PSILOCYBE

Psilocybe stuntzii

Named by Guzmán & J. Ott, 1977

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.

Guzmán and Ott described Psilocybe stuntzii in Mycologia 68(6): 1261, an issue dated 1976 that Species Fungorum dates to 1977. The holotype, at the University of Washington herbarium (WTU), was collected in Washington in 1973. Guzmán (1983) writes that the name honours Daniel E. Stuntz, who also collected the type.

Named
Guzmán & J. Ott, 1977
Type specimen
Washington (Species Fungorum: holotype WTU, 1973) (Species Fungorum record 321952; pin = Wikidata coordinates for Washington State (Q1223))
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. 1976

    Reported Chemical analysis published with the original description; Guzmán 1983 cites it as the chemical report for the species and lists psilocybin and psilocin

    Method: not read (paper not opened). Guzmán & Ott 1976, Mycologia 68: 1261-1267

  2. 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: The one modern analysis is of cultivated material from a single company programme, and Guzmán (1983) notes that an earlier 'P. cyanescens' analysis (Benedict et al. 1962) used a mixture of P. cyanescens and P. stuntzii.

Records on file.

GBIF, the global biodiversity database, held 230 occurrence records under this name, 50 of them from Canada, when we checked on October 25, 2026. GBIF held 50 Canadian records on 25 October 2026, 49 of them from British Columbia (28 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 .

Save to Pinterest