25 replies to this topic

[pulsar]

I've been lurking these forums for a year, but my friend sent me these fascinating pics and I had to share!

Sorry about the poor quality.

They don't look like subs to me, but I'm certainly no mycologist.
All I've seen are these pictures, no spore print or habitat were described to me I'm afraid.

Thanks in advance for any input.

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•  photo.jpg   1.61MB   53 downloads
•  photo-1.jpg   887.33K   60 downloads
•  photo-2.jpg   1.02MB   46 downloads
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[obtuse]

no, not subs that for sure,

the gills are the wrong colour, and stem wrong shape.

but that blueing is a concern for those who have been told if it blues its a psilocybe.

i dont know what it is, but i would love to know.

but interesting find. thanks for sharing.

Cheers, Obtuse.

[tripsis]

I disagree, I think they look like subs. Gill colour can be variable. The stipes are strangely clavate, but I don't think that's enough to rule out the possibility of them being subs. That intensity of blue can result from saturation with water.

[synchromesh]

The texture looks different. These look like the ones which always get mistaken for subs.

[ballzac]

Very interesting. They have a lot of sub traits. Striations definitely suggest sub. The main thing that makes me question that is the colour of the bruising. By the looks of the hand in the photos, it looks like the colour of the photos is not way off, and the bruising looks too purple to me. Psilocybe bruising is usually more of a Prussian Blue, tending to almost green on the caps. Having said that, I think they are subs, but have no explanation for the colour and intensity of the bruising. Notice that there are no spores on the stems? That would suggest to me that they are sterile, and sterile subs typically have very pale gills.

In spite of the fact that they appear to be subs (or at least a closely related psilocybe) I would strongly advise against anyone consuming them due to the disagreement here between people who are familiar with subs. If they are subs and get tossed away it's no big deal. If they are not subs and get eaten...well, you get the picture. Nice find anyway.

[ThunderIdeal]

why are they so hard to ID

looks like mine are all going in the bin

the whole situation is greatly concerning. could any of the blueing fakes be dangerous?

[obtuse]

dont forget, you can take a spore print.

while i'm a bit sus on the gills, variation is a given, and the light in the particular shot may have offset the colour somewhat.

the bruising colour just looks wrong to me. and in my experience when subs have been in a very moist environment the stems have more brown to them, and dont blue as much.

my big concern is the bulbous base, which seems to be a consistent trait, and the lack of thick mycelium strands or and hairy mycelium growth.

while i know they are a very variable species, and i have seen my fair share of oddballs, these just dont fit the bill in my opinion.

cheers, Obtuse.

[Amazonian]

why are they so hard to ID

looks like mine are all going in the bin

the whole situation is greatly concerning. could any of the blueing fakes be dangerous?

Galerina steglichii go blue and are meant to be active but don't know if they are in OZ

As the motto goes... if in doubt, throw it out( in a wood chip garden) , After a spore print of course.

EDIT: Forgot to welcome you to the forum pulsar.... Welcome

Edited by Amazonian, 27 April 2011 - 04:35 PM.

[Undergrounder]

The bulbous base, the stocky stems, slimy looking caps and the blue tinges look more like Cortinarius to me

but then again no obvious cortina..

A spore print would clear it all up in a second. Rust/brown for Cortinarius, Purple/Dark brown for Psilocybe.

I may have found the same or a similar species a few years ago.. I remember taking a picture. I couldn't decide if it was Cort or sub on the ground at the time. Growing solitary amongst soil and woody debris under Eucalypts.. I think i settled on Cort because the stem was quite woody and the habitat didn't really look like sub habitat.

Attached Files

•  mush.jpg   156.02K   6 downloads

Edited by Undergrounder, 27 April 2011 - 04:18 PM.

[ballzac]

dont forget, you can take a spore print.

A spore print would clear it all up in a second. Rust/brown for Cortinarius, Purple/Dark brown for Psilocybe.

Notice that there are no spores on the stems? That would suggest to me that they are sterile, and sterile subs typically have very pale gills.

It's possible that I'm wrong, but I don't see a single spore on the stems. Sub spores are very dark and show up clearly on the stem. Rust coloured spored would also be visible to some extent. If the spores are white, then they probably wouldn't be visible, but I think it's much more likely that there are no spores. Do you guys have a better explanation for the lack of spores on the stems? By all means get your friend to take a spore print. If something shows up then you can rule out subs or perhaps lend support to the possibility that they are subs. If there are no spores, then all it will tell you is that there's a possibility they're subs, but you know that already.

The more I look at the pics, the less they look like subs to me. This is based almost entirely on the bruise colour.

[ThunderIdeal]

hypothetically, you are uncertain about some of your finds but they are already mixed together and dried.

ideally you would be 100% certain of every find but this is very difficult.

does anybody have much of an idea about the harmfulness of various look-alikes? are they all going to kill or severely poison you?

i am beginning to think that subs are frequently misidentified, yet i haven't heard about frequent poisonings.

[ballzac]

hypothetically, you are uncertain about some of your finds but they are already mixed together and dried.

ideally you would be 100% certain of every find but this is very difficult.

does anybody have much of an idea about the harmfulness of various look-alikes? are they all going to kill or severely poison you?

i am beginning to think that subs are frequently misidentified, yet i haven't heard about frequent poisonings.

I think gallerina species are the only lookalikes that are potentially deadly, but there are probably a few that would make you quite sick. There's absolutely no reason to risk it.

[ThunderIdeal]

not when you live where they grow lol

but i will take your sage advice ballz

[Marcel]

Not subs. It's one of the purple Cortinarius species. I've been caught by this on a few occasions. It seems that as they age, they lose a lot of their colour and go brownish. Look at this photo: here. Note especially the one second from the left. It's quite sub like in a number of ways. As it ages it will get less purple on the cap. Note also that the younger ones are darker purple. The gills on the above photos look especially Cort like, as does the base of the stipe (subs stipes don't tend to flare out so much).

[Undergrounder]

hypothetically, you are uncertain about some of your finds but they are already mixed together and dried.

ideally you would be 100% certain of every find but this is very difficult.

does anybody have much of an idea about the harmfulness of various look-alikes? are they all going to kill or severely poison you?

i am beginning to think that subs are frequently misidentified, yet i haven't heard about frequent poisonings.

Cortinarius are the most common genus I know of that has small, brown coloured mushrooms (sub look-alikes) that can also have blue marks.

Many Cortinarius species are at least moderately poisonous.. But some are not poisonous at all.

http://www.ncbi.nlm..../pubmed/6349583

Galerinas, Hypholomas, Stropharias.. there are plenty of look-a-likes that grow in the same habitat, but none of these will have clear blue marks.

Regarding these mushies in the OP photo, I wouldn't want to ID them without having them in my hand and getting a solid spore print.

Edited by Undergrounder, 27 April 2011 - 06:29 PM.

[tripsis]

Good call on the Cortinarius species. Looking at the bluing, it does have a very purple tinge to it. Definitely wouldn't want to go eating any Cortinarius species without knowing exactly which one it was first.

[pulsar]

Thanks to everyone for their input on this.

And don't worry, these wont be consumed. My friend has seen no shortage of the real deal this season.

I've requested they do a spore print whilst hoping they haven't been chucked already. Just waiting for a reply...

[pulsar]

Ah, no chance of a spore print. They've been disposed of.

[Zen Peddler BlueGreenie]

Ive never heard of any Cortinarus sp staining blue. Infact I doubt its a Cortinarus.
Subaeruginosa has a particularly different stipe to other Psilocybes in that its much more grey-flecked than most others. That mushroom has this typical characteristic, but it also has gills that seem totally wrong for subaeruginosa. The bulbous base seems odd as well.

My call is that its probably some odd sub variant. It certainly isnt Gallerina and I doubt its Stropharia aurantiaca. Im not really sure how Cortinarus got raised either LOL - Im used to Cortinarus having defined gills and an inrolled prominent margin.

But since there are subs everywhere this year, why risk it?

[Undergrounder]

Ive never heard of any Cortinarus sp staining blue. Infact I doubt its a Cortinarus.
Subaeruginosa has a particularly different stipe to other Psilocybes in that its much more grey-flecked than most others. That mushroom has this typical characteristic, but it also has gills that seem totally wrong for subaeruginosa. The bulbous base seems odd as well.

My call is that its probably some odd sub variant. It certainly isnt Gallerina and I doubt its Stropharia aurantiaca.

Im not really sure how Cortinarus got raised either LOL - Im used to Cortinarus having defined gills and an inrolled prominent margin.

But since there are subs everywhere this year, why risk it?

I raised Cortinarius, and Marcel came up with the great idea that they change colour dramatically as they dry.

I'm pretty sure I found these in the mountains today.. the flash overexposed the caps a lot, the colour on the newer ones was a real royal, dark blue. They're not an exact match to the ones shown in the OP, but I think these things are just very variable with how they look at different times and under different conditions. They seem to start with a brown spot in the middle of the cap, surrounded by royal blue sheen at the edges. As the mushroom develops, the dark spot radiates outwards and the blue sheen starts to disappear, eventually appearing more or less brown. Then as it dries, the cap edges split easily and the gills turn up dramatically.

The stem remains sub-like and white, with a brown-stained cortina disappearing with age and blue marks remaining - particularly at the top of the stipe.

The gill colour remains the same - yellowish and without the grey tint that you get with subs.

They were growing solitary and in small groups of 1-3 underneath pine and eucalypt.. I picked them out by snapping the bases so if they did have bulbous bases you can't see them.

Pic 1: You can see the veil remnants with prominent rust brown spores. The cortina apparently disappears quickly with age.

Pic 2: is the same mush from above.

Pic 3: are slightly older/drier specimens, you can see the cap margins starting to crack and the blue caps start to lose their luster.

Pic 4: is a small cluster in natural setting.

Pic 5 and 6: are mushrooms drier still - Cap edges start to upturn, cap itself loses most of its blue colour, blue marks remain on the white stems.

Pic 7: is one of the dry mushrooms form above and one of the newer ones as well. I took them home to get a spore print. They dried out remarkably fast on the way home, i'm hoping they put up a print. If they're not printing by tomorrow, i'll try and get some spores from a gill fragment and put them under the scope.

... OK I think I can already see the faint beginnings of a rust brown print from the larger of those two I printed. (Nothing on the smaller dried out one yet) And the cap is now almost completely brown. The stem are remarkably sub-like now that they're dry... the blue is quite obvious.

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•  cort1.jpg   120.01K   5 downloads
•  cort2.jpg   120.48K   7 downloads
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•  cortupturn.jpg   112.41K   5 downloads
•  cortupturn2.jpg   94.94K   6 downloads
•  dried2.jpg   41.26K   6 downloads

Edited by Undergrounder, 03 May 2011 - 09:56 PM.

[paradox]

Cortinarius rotundisporus

this species doesn't 'stain' blue, the bluish purple sheen is part of the color scheme of the outer layer

[Undergrounder]

Edit:

this species doesn't 'stain' blue, the bluish purple sheen is part of the color scheme of the outer layer

Yeah I don't consider the blue in the OP posts to be staining either.. just remnants of the Cort. rotundisporis blue colouration

Edit again:

Various photos showing dramatic differences in cap colour - complete blue to complete brown.

http://www.kaimaibus...undisporus.html

http://australianfun...undisporus.html

Edited by Undergrounder, 03 May 2011 - 10:05 PM.

[paradox]

theyr'e pretty common & live in the same habitat as subauruginosa more or less.. perhaps an example of convergent evolution?

[Zen Peddler BlueGreenie]

That being said your mushroom doesnt have the same swollen base as the mushroom in the first post. But there are similarities. Seems like a likely candidate.

[paradox]

i don't know if undergrounders shrooms are the same... i was referring to the OP