Ps.Cyanescens less likely in Melbourne

[spiders]

For a number of years there has been regular patches around Melbourne that have been fruiting a mushroom that macroscopically resembles Psilocybe Cyanescens and which had been identified by a number of people - most notably Dutchie as Ps.Cyanescens.

This mushroom was also reported by Guzman in 1995 and by Watling earlier as being found in Australia.

To confirm this information, I gathered a few wild specimens and sporeprints of this mushroom and began the task of contacting a variety of people regarding this.

John Allen was the first to reject the idea of Ps.Cyanescens in Australia and felt that both Gartz and Stamets also doubted the appearence of Ps.Cyanescens in Australia - raising the point that Ps.Subaeruginosa has been described as having wavy margins on maturity and brown pigmented pluerocystidia. An idenfication of the psilocybe found in Western Australia that was first thought to be Ps.Cyanescens was confirmed as Ps.Subaeruginosa despite macroscopically resembling Ps.Cyanescens. This mushroom was generally larger at maturity.

I have sent gill fragments and sporeprints to a variety of sources - one of a regular species of Ps.Subaeruginosa, one of a suspected (but still very-much unconfirmed) Australiana, and one of the wavy-capped Ps.Cyanescens lookalike - too Workman of sporeworks, Teonan and to Gartz via John Allen.

Teonan's findings where that all mushrooms had brown pigmented pleurocystidia - a characteristic only of Ps.Subaeruginosa. Although the Australiana specimen did show lageniform but pigmented Pleurocystidia = like it was half Australiana and half Subaeruginosa microscopically (lending wight to Chang and Mills' argument??)

Workman's results were more ambigious, with each mushroom displaying four-spored basidia and hyaline pluerocystidia with no pigmentation noted in the specimens he examined.

Gartz' results are still being established.

These results all display pleurocystidia - Ps.Cyanescens as originally described by Wakefield did not even have pleurocystidia in Europe. American varieties of Ps.Cyanescens has smaller spores on average than all australian Psilocybes (spore size of ps.cyan 9-12 by 5-8 vs. Subaeruginosa 13-15 by 6-7.7) has 4 spored basidia, but has pleurocystidia described by Stamets as mucronate, fuscoid-ventricose to subpyriform.

For more info and pictures of mushrooms specimens and microscans try this link:

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat= &Board=Forum3&Number=675799&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#Post675939://http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho...rt=1#Post675939://http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho...rt=1#Post675939://http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho...rt=1#Post675939://http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho...rt=1#Post675939://http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho...rt=1#Post675939://http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho...rt=1#Post675939://http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho...rt=1#Post675939

or http://www.sporeworks.com/newpictures/Wild...d%20Australian/

[This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 14 June 2002).]

[spiders]

Already I have an update - Teonan can offer no identification as to whether these mushrooms are. He now thinks that they both have hyaline plueroCystidia - the original sample most likely being Australiana with lageniform and hyaline pluerocystidia being present. Interestingly the P.cystidia are not only lageniform but all sorts of other shapes as well - similar to the description of Ps.Eucalypta in Stamets/Guzman.

His original finding of brown pigmented pleurocystidia has been altered - if Stamets thinks that Subaeruginosa has this characteristic, then NONE of the mushrooms in melbourne are Subaeruginosa.

[This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 14 June 2002).]

[This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 15 June 2002).]