From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Psilocybe baeocystis also known as Bottle Caps, Knobby Tops, Blue Bells, Olive Caps and Potent Psilocybe is a psilocybin mushroom of the Agaricales family, in the section Aztecorum, having psilocybin and psilocin as main active compounds along with a relatively significant amount of baeocystin. Psilocybe baeocystis was first discovered in Eugene, Oregon in 1945.
[edit] Habitat and formation
Psilocybe baeocystis is found growing solitary to scattered to numerous, in wood chips, on decayed wood, decaying moss and on decaying conifer mulch, lawns, pastures and substrates containing high amounts of lignin. Has been found growing from the seed cones of Douglas fir. Found August through December and rarely as early as the end of June . Common throughout the Pacific Northwest. Found under plants like rhododendrons and rose bushes in mulched garden beds. Sometimes growing amongst other Psilocybes such as Psilocybe stuntzii and Psilocybe cyanescens. A variant of Psilocybe baeocystis was found in Maine in November of 2007.
[edit] Description
- Cap: 1.5 - 5.5 cm, conic to obtusely conic to convex, margin incurved when young, rarely plane in age, often distinctly rippled, translucent-striate, bruising and aging greenish-bluish about the margin. Dark olive brown to buff brown, occasionally steel blue, when dried tending toward copper brown in the center, hygrophanous, fading to milk white, viscid when moist from a gelatinous pellicle, usually separable. Bruises blue easily.
- Gills: Close with adnate to sinuate attachment, grayish to cinnamon brown with the edges remaining pallid.
- Spores: Dark purplish brown in deposit, elongate ellipsoid in face view or asymmetric ellipsoid (mango form) in side view, (8.5)9.5-13.7(17) by (5)5.5-6.6(7.1) um.
- Stipe: 5 - 7 cm long, 2-3 mm thick, equal to subequal, pallid to brownish with white filaments, while often more yellowish towards the apex, distinct rhizomorphs at the base, brittle, stuffed with loose fibers, partial veil evanescent and rapidly becoming indistinguishable, staining blue easily where damaged.
- Taste: Farinaceous.
- Odor: Farinaceous.
- Microscopic features: Basidia 4-spored, pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia 20-30 (40) by 4.5-6(9) um, fusiod with a narrow neck.
