Full SizePileus: 30-100mm in diameter, conic to convex,
expanding to broadly convex and eventually flattening with age with a
pronounced, persistent broad umbo; surface smooth, viscous when moist,
covered by a separable gelatinous pellicle; chestnut to ochraceous
brown to caramel in color often becoming pitted with dark blue or
bluish black zones, hygrophanous, fading to light straw color in
drying, strongly bruising blue when damaged; margin even, sometimes
irregular and eroded at maturity, slightly incurved at first, soon
decurved, flattening with maturity, translucent striate and often
leaving a fibrillose annular zone in the upper regions of the stem.
Lamellae: ascending, sinuate
to adnate, brown, often stained info-black where injured, close, with
two tiers of lamellulae, mottled, edges withish.
Spore-print: dark purplish brown to purplish black in mass.
Stipe: 90-200mm long by 3-6mm
thick, silky white, dingy brown from the base or in age, hollow at
maturity. Composed of twisted, cartilaginous tissue. Base of stem
thickening downwards, often curved, and characterized by coarse white
aerial tufts of mycelium, often with azure tones. Mycelium surrounding
stipe base densely rhizomorphic, silky white, tenaciously holding the
wood-chips together, strongly bruising bluish upon disturbance.
Odor: none to slightly farinaceous.
Taste: extremely bitter.
Habitat: Cespitose to
gregarious on deciduous wood-chips and/or in sandy soils rich in
lignicolous debris. Aspect collyboid, generating an extensive, dense
and tenacious mycelial mat, Psilocybe azurescens causes the whitening
of wood. Fruitings begin in late September and continue until harsh
frost, usually mid-November. Most abundant the Astoria, Oregon area
(the type locality), but is rapidly becoming more widespread due to
deliberate outdoor cultivation. It has been reported as far south as
Santa Cruz, California, though it is not common in California. Fruiting
is typically in January in California.
