Psilocybe caerulescens

Psilocybe caerulescens, known as Derrumbes or the Landslide Mushroom, is a psilocybin-producing species native to southern Mexico and subtropical South America. It fruits gregariously to cespitosely on disturbed, muddy, or humus-rich soils, often along ravines, landslides, and near corn or coffee plantations. Handling bruises the flesh and stem a distinctive blue, reflecting the psilocybin and psilocin it contains.

History

Psilocybe caerulescens is among the most historically significant of the sacred Mesoamerican mushrooms. Collected by Richard Schultes and Blas Pablo Reko near Huautla de Jiménez in 1938, it was the species ingested by R. Gordon Wasson during his 1955 velada with the Mazatec curandera María Sabina — the event that introduced "magic mushrooms" to the wider world through Wasson's 1957 Life magazine essay. It was the first Psilocybe recognized as psychoactive in the modern record. Together with P. aztecorum, it is a likely candidate for the teonanácatl referenced by Sahagún among the Aztecs.

Overview

The cap is 2 to 9 cm broad, deep olive black when young and strongly hygrophanous, fading to dark reddish or chestnut brown. The stem reaches 120 mm, often extends into a long pseudorhiza, and bruises bluish to azure when handled. Gills are grayish to soot brown with whitish edges. The species is a saprotroph of disturbed and muddy ground. It is psychoactive and used ceremonially; it is not a culinary mushroom, and its possession or use is restricted by law in many regions.