Psilocybe caerulipes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Psilocybe caerulipes | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Binomial name | ||||||||||||||
| Psilocybe caerulipes Peck |
||||||||||||||
 Range of Psilocybe caerulipes
|
||||||||||||||
| Synonyms | ||||||||||||||
|
Agaricus caerulipes |
|
||||||||||||||||
Psilocybe caerulipes, also known as Blue-foot is a rare psilocybin mushroom of the Agaricales family, in the section Semilanceata, having psilocybin and psilocin as main active compounds.
[edit] Description
- Cap: 1 to 3.5 cm in diameter, Obtusely conic to convex, margin incurved at first, becoming broadly convex to plane or retaining a slight umbo, at times quite irregular, surface viscid when moist from a gelatinous pellicle, but soon becoming dry and shiny, translucent-striate, and decorated with fine fibrillose veil remnants near the margin, often with greenish stains near the margin or a greenish tinge overall. Cinnamon brown to dingy brown when fresh, hygrophanous and soon fading to dingy ochraceous buff to cinnamon buff. Flesh thin, pliant, bruising blue, sometimes slowly.
- Gills: Close to crowded, narrow with adnate to sinuate to uncinate attachment. They are light brown at first, becoming rusty cinnamon as the spores mature, edges whitish and slightly fimbriate.
- Spores: Dark purple brown, ellipsoid, 7-10 by 4-5 um from 4-spored basidia, thick walled, with a broad germ pore. Spores from 2-spored basidia are larger.
- Stipe: 3 to 6 cm long, 1.5 to 3 mm thick, whitish to buff at first. Pallid to bluish when dried, becoming dingy brown towards the base with age, bruises blue, sometimes slowly. Surface powdered at the apex, and covered with whitish to grayish fibrils downwards. Flesh stuffed with a pith and solid at first but becoming tubular or hollow, Lacks an annulus but sometimes remnants of the thin cortinate partial veil form a soon disappearing evanescent fibrillose annular zone in the superior region of the stem.
- Taste: Farinaceous.
- Odor: None to slightly farinaceous.
- Microscopic features: Basidia 2 and 4 spored. Pleurocystidia absent. Cheilocystidia 18-35 x 4.5-7.5 um, langeniform, with a thin neck, sometimes forked, 1-2.5 um broad at apices.
[edit] Habitat and formation
Psilocybe caerulipes is found from late June through December, on hardwood slash and debris, plant matter, on or about decaying hardwood logs, birch, beech and maple, especially along river systems. From Maine to North Carolina, west to Michigan, has also been found as far north as Ontario Canada and as far south as Mexico. A delicate and small mushroom, it can grow on leave stems. It grows solitary or in small groups. It is often overlooked as just another little brown mushroom, although widely distributed, it is not found often. It is sometimes confused with the larger Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata.
